TL;DR: Visa, BILL and Billtrust are piloting trusted AI agents that complete approved invoice payments through supplier portals.

The next stage of automated payments may depend less on how fast a transfer settles and more on proving who authorised it. Visa, BILL and Billtrust announced an October 20 live pilot allowing trusted AI agents to initiate and complete approved buyer-invoice payments through supplier portals.

The project uses Visa’s Intelligent Commerce tools, including Trusted Agent Protocol, to authenticate software agents to portals that historically expected a human user. The companies emphasise preserving supplier oversight and controls. This is a limited business-payments pilot, not an announcement that autonomous systems…