Visa’s “Trusted Agent Protocol” is raising the bar for safe, agent-driven retail experiences

The retail landscape is shifting rapidly. According to Visa, in the U.S. the share of retail site traffic driven by AI agents surged 4,700% in the past year. Visa Investor Relations+2Investing News Network (INN)+2 Meanwhile, 85% of shoppers who used AI in their experience say it improved the result. Visa Investor Relations

In response to these trends, Visa has introduced the Trusted Agent Protocol — a new framework designed to enable secure, seamless interactions between merchants and AI agents acting on behalf of consumers. Visa Investor Relations+1

What is the Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP)

• TAP enables merchants to verify that an AI “agent” (for example a shopping assistant acting for the consumer) is trusted, carrying the correct credentials, and legitimately intended to perform commerce. Visa Investor Relations+1
• It supports three key pieces of information:
  1. Agent Intent – the agent’s verified intention to browse or purchase. Visa Investor Relations
  2. Consumer Recognition – whether the agent is acting for a known consumer or account, preserving customer-identity visibility. Visa Investor Relations
  3. Payment Information – the agent may carry payment data aligned with the merchant’s checkout preferences. Visa Investor Relations+1
• TAP is built on standards like HTTP Message Signatures, Web Authn, and intends to align with global bodies such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), OpenID Foundation and EMVCo. Visa Investor Relations

Why This Matters for Retailers & Category Managers

For professionals involved in category management, retail operations, and data-driven commerce platforms (such as your work with suppliers, retailer data, etc.), this has several implications:

• Trust and Agentic Commerce: As more commerce is mediated by AI agents (e.g., bots that search, compare and even pay), retailers need mechanisms to distinguish between legitimate assistant-driven purchases and malicious bots. The protocol gives merchants that tool. ETCentric+1
• Customer visibility: Traditional bot-detection systems can mistakenly block legitimate agent-based activity. TAP aims to preserve visibility of the consumer behind the agent, so you don’t lose the relationship trace or analytics you rely on. Visa Investor Relations
• Smooth customer journey / conversion: Agent-driven commerce promises friction-less shopping — faster checkout, fewer steps. For category managers optimizing basket size, items-per-basket and penetration among shoppers, this can drive uplift. TAP helps ensure this automation doesn’t compromise reliability or trust.
• Ecosystem readiness: Your data collaboration platforms, ETL pipelines and category performance dashboards will increasingly need to feed into this agent-driven world. It’s worth considering how agent-driven shopping behaviors (e.g., AI assistants sourcing products, comparing category SKUs) will show up in your data, and how you prepare for it.

Strategic Questions to Ask Now

• How prepared is your retail partner or supplier network to recognise and support agent-driven checkout flows (guest login, known user, AI agent proxies)?
• In your category data flows, will you be able to capture “agent vs. human” signals, and assess performance separately?
• Are your systems prepared for more automated or agent-mediated basket behaviour (both in terms of item selection & payment flow)?
• How will loyalty, promotions and post-purchase services work when an agent executes the transaction? TAP suggests these areas are in scope. Visa Corporate

Why This Fits Your Hypertrade Strategy

• You’re working with retailers and suppliers on data-driven category management. Agent-mediated commerce introduces new dimensions of data: who the agent is, which consumer they represent, what intent they bring.
• By highlighting frameworks like TAP, your audience on LinkedIn (category managers, buyers, data collaboration specialists) will appreciate that you’re not just focused on “classic” retail metrics but on the evolving frontier of intelligent commerce.
• Your platform’s role (enabling supplier access, managing transformation, providing analytics) becomes more valuable if it supports these emerging behaviours and data flows—this positions Hyper-trade as future-ready.

Conclusion
The Trusted Agent Protocol from Visa signals that the retail industry is entering a new era — one where AI agents don’t just assist, but act on behalf of consumers, and where merchants need mechanisms to handle this transition securely and intelligently. For category management professionals and data-transformation specialists, this is not “nice to have” but a strategic shift worth understanding and preparing for.

Let’s embrace it — and ensure our categories, data flows and supplier networks are aligned for the agent-enabled future of commerce.

📎 Additional Resources

To explore the foundations of the Trusted Agent Protocol and its role in the rise of AI-driven commerce, here are the key resources referenced in this article:

Official Visa Announcement
Visa Introduces Trusted Agent Protocol: An Ecosystem-Led Framework for AI Commerce
Visa Investor Relations
https://investor.visa.com/news/news-details/2025/Visa-Introduces-Trusted-Agent-Protocol-An-Ecosystem-Led-Framework-for-AI-Commerce/default.aspx

Hypertrade supports retailers preparing for TAP and agent-driven commerce by strengthening the data and integration layers AI agents depend on:
• Category Management – Structuring product data for consistent AI-agent understanding
https://hyper-trade.com/services/category-management
• Retail Data & API Integration – Ensuring clean data flows and system interoperability for intelligent, automated journeys
https://hyper-trade.com/solutions
• Retail Analytics – Providing insights to track new agent-mediated behaviors
https://hyper-trade.com/insights