Visa has introduced the Agentic Ready program across the Asia Pacific region, which includes Malaysia, to prepare banks and the broader payments ecosystem for what they’re calling agentic commerce – basically, transactions handled by AI agents on behalf of users.
The first phase is about giving banks a structured, controlled environment where they can actually experiment, test, and validate on how these AI-initiated transactions would work in real-world conditions, without jumping straight into full deployment. Backing this up is Visa’s existing infrastructure, like tokenization, identity systems, and risk controls.
In Malaysia, banks like Alliance Bank Malaysia Berhad, CIMB Bank Berhad, Hong Leong Bank, and Maybank are already on board, as none of them wants to figure this out in isolation. They see this as a shared ecosystem problem, especially since AI is rapidly reshaping how consumers behave and how services are delivered.
Zooming out a bit, this is part of Visa’s bigger transition toward payments that can adapt to user intent and context automatically. So instead of you manually approving every step, an AI agent could eventually handle parts of the transaction flow, but still within boundaries you control.
From Visa Malaysia’s perspective, Previn Pillay stated that this as a necessary step as commerce becomes more automated, emphasizing that trust, security, and user control still need to stay front and center. At the same time, Visa isn’t just working with banks, but also coordinating globally with merchants, platforms, and tech partners to make sure everything connects smoothly when this eventually goes mainstream.
