BILL, Visa, and Billtrust announced this week that they have launched the first live pilot to enable AI agents to initiate and complete approved buyer invoice payments end-to-end through supplier portals.
Until now, many payment portals relied on human authentication requirements that limited how approved payments could be automated. Together, with accounts payable and receivable solutions providers BILL and Billtrust, the Visa Intelligent Commerce portfolio helps bridge that gap. Leveraging offerings such as Visa Trusted Agent Protocol, AI agents can now be securely authenticated to credentialed portals. As a result, buyer payments that previously relied on manual entry can be completed by trusted AI agents, while preserving supplier control and oversight.
The flow begins when the authorized BILL Payment Agent—registered using Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol and Agentic Directory—uses tokenized payment credentials and controls aligned with the buyer’s approved payment instructions to issue payments on behalf of BILL’s customers. Supported by capabilities within the Visa Intelligent Commerce portfolio, this enables BILL to securely automate card payments for supplier invoices.
Once the payment is initiated, Billtrust leverages Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol to recognize, authenticate, and grant access to the authorized agent enabling BILL to complete the invoice payment on the customer’s behalf. This agent authentication can satisfy the site protections historically provided by CAPTCHA and other bot blocking mechanisms, without requiring an additional agent login. As a result, Billtrust customers can receive fast portal payments in accordance with their acceptance policy, which can help accelerate cash flow.
“Businesses should not have to choose between automation and control when making payments,” Mark Nelsen, senior vice president and head of product for commercial and money movement solutions at Visa, said in a statement on Oct. 20. “This pilot applies agentic commerce to a real B2B-payment problem, by having trusted agents complete payments across platforms. Working with BILL and Billtrust, we are testing how identity, payment controls, and transaction visibility can make that model work.”
Drawing on capabilities within the Visa Intelligent Commerce portfolio, including Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol, the pilot enables:
- A recognized and authenticated AI agent acting on behalf of an identified buyer.
- Tokenized payment credentials rather than shared supplier-portal logins.
- Payment controls tied to the customer’s approved payment instruction.
- A purpose-built payment path tied to the specific invoice.
- Visibility into the authorization and completion of the payment.
“Nearly 500,000 businesses trust BILL to move, manage, and maximize their money, and that trust depends on removing friction without sacrificing accuracy and security of supplier payments. For too long, supplier portals have been friction points, requiring a person to manually complete what should be an automated step,” Archana Prasad, senior vice president of payments and financial services at BILL, said in a statement. “With Visa and Billtrust, BILL’s AI-powered payments technology is closing that gap: the payment gets done, the supplier gets paid faster, and finance teams get their time back.”
For suppliers using Billtrust, the pilot creates a way to recognize and accept payments initiated by trusted business agents, helping release trapped cash while retaining the information needed to process and reconcile the payment within their existing payment acceptance policy. For buyers using BILL, automating this last manual step can give finance teams back the time they’d spend manually keying information into supplier payment portals.
“Agentic commerce will only move forward if businesses can trust agents to operate across systems with the same clarity and accountability they expect from people,” Kunal Patel, senior vice president of payments at Billtrust, said in a statement. “By connecting buyer-side invoice approval with supplier-side payment acceptance, this pilot shows how authorized agents can complete business transactions, releasing trapped cash faster while adhering to a complex acceptance policy and preserving visibility and control for both sides.”
The pilot is currently live and processing end-to-end transactions with participating buyers using BILL and Billtrust suppliers. As the pilot progresses, Visa, BILL, and Billtrust say they will continue exploring opportunities in agentic payments.
Photo credit: BILL
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