Nuvei has completed a live agentic-commerce proof of concept with Visa, merchant technology provider Arvato Systems, and fashion brand Kings and Priests.
In the transaction, a merchant’s AI agent initiated a product purchase on a shopper’s behalf and completed payment inside the agent, without a hand-off to a separate payment flow. Multiple issuers across Europe took part, completing agentic payments settled on live Visa rails using a tokenized Visa credential within Visa Intelligent Commerce. The payments were governed by shopper-set guardrails, including spend caps and approved categories.
Issuing partners in the proof of concept included Alpha Bank, Piraeus Bank, Bank Leumi, CAL, MAX and Bank of Cyprus. Nuvei said the proof of concept also serves as a proof point for Nuvei Agentic, a protocol-agnostic execution layer intended to let any AI agent initiate a payment.
Phil Fayer, Chair and CEO of Nuvei, said: “Agentic commerce is the next evolution of digital commerce, with AI not just finding products but initiating purchases. This proof of concept starts inside a merchant’s own experience and points to where payments are heading: a layer that lets any agent, on any protocol, make a payment.”
Nuvei said the approach reflects feedback from merchants at its Global Customer Advisory Board this week, who identified first-party agentic capabilities, meaning agents built into a merchant’s own environment, as an immediate priority, with controls for public, third-party agents to follow as the market develops. Nuvei, Visa and the participating issuers are now working to move the capabilities demonstrated in the proof of concept toward production.
Mathieu Altwegg, Head of Product & Solutions, Visa Europe, commented: “Through Visa Agentic Ready, we are extending existing capabilities — including tokenization and network-level controls — to enable agent-initiated payments in a trusted and consistent way. This proof of concept shows how those foundations can support new experiences today, with authentication continuing to evolve as the model scales.”
Carsten Bruning, Vice President Digital Commerce at Arvato Systems, noted: “This proof of concept shows how the payments ecosystem can enable AI-driven purchasing while preserving trust, control, and transparency. With Visa and Nuvei, we validated interoperability across the flow and proved that payment can complete inside the agent rather than on the merchant site.”
Ralph Hürlemann, Founder of Kings and Priests, added: “For Kings and Priests, this was a firsthand look at how agentic commerce can open new channels for digital retail. An AI agent initiating a purchase on a consumer’s behalf can reshape how customers discover and buy online.”
Alongside the proof of concept, Nuvei outlined two components of its planned agentic infrastructure. A Protocol Compatibility Layer is intended to let merchants integrate once and accept payments from agent standards including ACP, AP2 and MCP, with Nuvei planning to certify against both Visa Intelligent Commerce and Mastercard Agent Pay. A Know Your Agent function is intended to register and credential agents, validate a consumer’s purchase mandate, score agent reputation, and keep actions auditable. Nuvei said it is targeting initial availability of these capabilities in the second half of 2026.
Same-Day Announcement From Worldline, ING And Visa
Nuvei’s announcement was published the same day as a separate agentic-payment announcement involving Visa: a live transaction completed by Worldline and ING in Germany, using Visa Payment Passkeys and biometric authentication under existing Strong Customer Authentication requirements.
Both announcements involve Visa and describe agent-initiated purchases carried out within consumer-defined limits, and both keep a bank in the authorisation loop — ING as issuer in the Worldline transaction, and the named European issuers in Nuvei’s proof of concept. Mathieu Altwegg of Visa Europe is quoted in both announcements, framing each as a step in Visa’s Agentic Ready programme.
At the same time, the Worldline/ING transaction was a single pilot purchase in Germany, authenticated through Visa Payment Passkeys with biometric confirmation, and completed through a conventional checkout journey after the agent identified the product. Nuvei’s proof of concept, on the other hand, kept the purchase and payment inside the agent itself, involved six named issuers across multiple European markets rather than one issuer in one country, and was paired with a broader strategy announcement, i.e. Nuvei Agentic, including the Protocol Compatibility Layer and Know Your Agent with a stated second-half-2026 availability target. Visa’s Altwegg described authentication in the Nuvei proof of concept as still evolving, while the Worldline/ING transaction was built specifically around biometric SCA compliance.
Neither announcement specifies a date for moving from pilot or proof-of-concept status to general commercial availability.
