Visa, BILL and Billtrust have begun a live pilot in which authenticated AI agents complete buyer-approved invoice payments through supplier portals. The companies say the system is already processing end-to-end transactions between participating BILL customers and suppliers using Billtrust.
The BILL Payment Agent executes eligible payments that the buyer has already approved. It does not decide which payments to make. The pilot focuses on the final submission step, where a finance employee would otherwise log into a supplier portal and manually enter payment information.
The agent is registered using Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol and Agentic Directory. It uses tokenized payment credentials and controls aligned with the buyer’s approved instructions to initiate card payments for supplier invoices, with support from the Visa Intelligent Commerce portfolio.
On the supplier side, Billtrust uses Trusted Agent Protocol to recognize and authenticate the authorized agent and grant access to the portal. The agent can then complete the invoice payment for the customer. Suppliers retain their own payment acceptance policies.
Visa says this authentication can satisfy site protections historically provided by CAPTCHA and other bot-blocking mechanisms without requiring an additional agent login. Buyers do not need to share supplier-portal login credentials with the agent. The companies describe a payment path tied to a specific invoice, with visibility into authorization and completion.
BILL, which says its platform serves nearly 500,000 businesses, provides the buyer-side payment workflow, while Billtrust provides the supplier-side portal and acceptance process. The pilot connects the buyer’s invoice approval with the supplier’s payment controls and retains the information needed to process and reconcile the payment under the supplier’s existing policy.
For buyer-side platforms, Visa says the model could expand card-payment opportunities with suppliers whose automated payment options have historically focused on ACH transfers or checks. For suppliers, it is intended to accelerate portal payments and support faster collection of outstanding invoices. The business-to-business pilot follows consumer tests of Visa Intelligent Commerce, including a CaixaBank payment initiated by an AI agent on existing card infrastructure.
“This pilot applies agentic commerce to a real B2B-payment problem, by having trusted agents complete payments across platforms,” said Mark Nelsen, Visa’s senior vice president and head of product for commercial and money movement solutions. “Working with BILL and Billtrust, we are testing how identity, payment controls and transaction visibility can make that model work.”
Sources: Visa
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
