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A study showed that only 24% of US adults would be comfortable letting an AI make a purchase for them.
Imagine a world where AI can book a flight and order new luggage using your credit card. Don’t spend too much time visualizing; We already live in it.
Visa said this week that it is cooperating with… OpenAI To allow you to make Visa payments on its Chatbot AI. Visa announced the news at the Visa Payments Forum 2026 on Wednesday in San Francisco. Visa plans to use tokenization, which replaces your 16-digit card number with a random string of numbers, to protect your information when paying online.
The partnership is part of Visa Intelligent Commerce, a payment processor platform for agent commerce. The goal is for OpenAI and Visa to collaborate to allow ChatGPT to initiate and complete transactions — without your help. How safe is that?
Creating a whole new layer to the digital payment landscape could create many problems, he says Daniela Floresan AI and machine learning technical writer, financial and career writer, and former member of CNET’s Financial Expert Review Board. “In any situation, and not just this one, the more parties that have your payment credentials, the greater the chance of data breach and theft,” Flores said in an email to CNET.
How will ChatGPT work with Visa?
The goal of Visa’s OpenAI partnership with Visa is to make shopping easier and more efficient while ensuring that consumers still decide when, where and how their money is spent, a Visa spokesperson said in an email to CNET.
“Consumers remain in complete control,” the spokesperson said. “AI agents can only initiate purchases within clearly defined parameters defined by the user, such as spending limits, authorized merchants, or required approvals.”
The visa said in a press release It is planning other AI-driven tools and features, such as an agent scoring system for merchants to evaluate whether or not their website is ready for AI commerce. There’s also an upcoming agent guide for merchants to see which AI agents they trust with transactions, including Visa-certified agents and merchants. The company also plans to use an artificial intelligence model to improve fraud detection.
We’ll have to wait and see when this feature is rolled out, where it’s available first and what its limitations are.
Watch this: AI data center infrastructure plans continue to spark controversy
The problem is giving AI your payment information
These security measures do not necessarily guarantee that you will not fall victim to them scam Or theft. Visa and OpenAI did not share who would be responsible if that I have an agent Makes a costly mistake. Imagine you trust AI to buy your luggage, but you choose the wrong bag or ship it to the wrong address. The companies did not respond to a request for comment.
Do people even want this? A Bain & Company 2025 Survey It found that about a quarter (24%) of US consumers surveyed would feel comfortable letting AI make a purchase for them. If most adults in the United States aren’t fans of robots shopping and buying for them, why enable them?
AI is positioned as a useful time-saving tool, but this convenience comes at a cost when our personal information is at risk. Shopping is personal. While AI can be used to research, compare and recommend, many Americans do not want a robot to act autonomously in some of their personal decisions using their hard-earned money.
It’s not OpenAI’s first foray into shopping, nor is OpenAI unique among AI companies.
ChatGPT already has ChatGPT search, so you can shop, compare and buy items directly in chat without going to an external website. The retired Visa Instant Checkout service allowed an AI agent to be your personal shopper for an item. But the big difference between the two is that you will complete the purchasing process yourself. Other companies have highlighted AI-powered shopping, e.g Google, apple and Samsungin their playgrounds around Amnesty International agent.
In the meantime, use AI in the way that feels most comfortable to you — even if that means not using it at all.
“There’s no pressure to use these AI tools. If you’re not comfortable doing it, don’t do it, especially if you don’t understand how your data is secured and what AI agents can and can’t do with that data,” Flores said.
