Soon online shoppers will be able to make purchases straight from their chatbots, which could drive the biggest shift in shopping since Amazon or the iPhone. Visa on announced a push to embed its payment network into AI systems, including chatbots and agents. The effort is in the early testing stage, with Visa listing OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Mistral and Perplexity among its partners.”We think the shift could rival the level of impact that e-commerce and mobile commerce themselves have [had],” Visa chief product and strategy officer Jack Forestell said. Visa demoed how a user can enter their payment information into a chatbot, just once, and use natural conversation with an AI agent to purchase a range of goods and services. Under the hood, Visa is incorporating the tokenization technology it has used to secure mobile and online commerce, combined with mechanisms for communicating authentication, payment intent and instructions. “We could give AI agents payment tools today, and they’d be able to go out, access your credentials, your cards, your money, and go spend it,” Forestell said on stage Wednesday. “That would just uncover a bunch of other really important problems that we need to get solved before we take step one.” Forestell is “hopeful that within the next 12 months” people have the option to use autonomous agent payments, at least within certain use cases. Separately, OpenAI said that ChatGPT search will begin including direct product links in its results, starting with categories including fashion, beauty, home goods and electronics. Experts say retailers need to start rethinking their e-commerce strategy to prepare for chatbots to play a significant role. The shift could allow companies to spend less on search advertising, but having the most up-to-date information on products and their availability will become more important, Pimberly CEO Martin Balaam told.