Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) announced the expansion of its Visa Agentic Ready program to Canadian issuers, designed to help prepare the payments ecosystem for AI agent-initiated transactions.

The program enables participating banks to test AI agent-initiated payments in controlled environments using live cards and real merchants. Participants can validate payment flows including card enrollment, tokenization, authentication and transaction authorization while assessing security mechanisms for AI-driven transactions.

Early Canadian issuing partners include Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Nova Scotia and Toronto-Dominion Bank. Additional Canadian issuers are expected to join the program.

"Visa Agentic Ready gives Canadian issuers a meaningful head start in preparing for agent-initiated commerce," said Michiel Wielhouwer, President and Country Manager at Visa Canada. "The program provides a controlled environment to test and validate how agent-initiated payments can operate responsibly within Canada."

The program utilizes Visa's tokenization, identity verification, authentication and risk management infrastructure. It supports Visa's goal of achieving 100% tokenization of online payments to ensure AI-initiated transactions remain connected to verified users.

Visa Agentic Ready operates in Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific, with additional market rollouts planned for this year. The program builds on Visa Intelligent Commerce, which has launched in the United States with live transactions currently taking place.

The initiative addresses the evolution of commerce where AI agents may act on behalf of consumers to initiate and complete transactions, requiring new approaches to transaction authorization, trust and security at scale.