Visa Launches ‘Agentic Ready’ Program in Malaysia with Alliance Bank Malaysia Berhad, CIMB Bank Berhad, Hong Leong Bank, and Maybank — Advancing Agentic Commerce

05/06/2026

Visa, a global leader in digital payments, today announced the launch of Visa Agentic Ready across Asia Pacific, including Malaysia. This global program is designed to support the payments ecosystem in the era of agentic commerce. 

In its first phase, Visa Agentic Ready focuses on issuer readiness, providing a structured pathway for issuers to test, validate, and understand agent-initiated transactions in a controlled, production-grade environment. The program enables issuers to experience how AI agents initiate and complete transactions on behalf of consumers, and to test their readiness to support agentic commerce — while maintaining the trust, control, and protections that underpin the Visa network.

“As commerce becomes increasingly automated, trust, security and consumer control become even more important. Visa Agentic Ready gives Malaysian issuers a practical and structured way to better understand how agent initiated payments could work on the Visa network — before these experiences scale. At the same time, Visa is also working globally with merchants, platforms, and technology partners to enable trusted agent driven commerce, so that when these experiences mature, they come together seamlessly across the ecosystem. This helps ensure innovation can progress responsibly, while keeping people firmly in control of how and when payments are made," said Previn Pillay, Country Manager at Visa Malaysia.

Visa Agentic Ready is powered by Visa’s foundational network capabilities, bringing together tokens, identity, risk and controls to examine how trusted agent‑initiated payments could be enabled across use cases. This builds on Visa Intelligent Commerce — Visa’s portfolio of initiatives and solutions focused on enabling trusted, AI-driven commerce experiences at scale.

From Readiness to Real World Scale

Bringing agentic commerce to life at scale requires coordination across the payments ecosystem. Visa has enrolled several partners from 10 markets across the region into the Agentic Ready programme including Alliance Bank Malaysia Berhad, CIMB Bank Berhad, Hong Leong Bank, and Maybank in Malaysia, with additional partners expected to join as the programme expands to merchants and ecosystem enablers. 

“Preparing for agent initiated payments isn’t something banks can do in isolation. Programs like Visa Agentic Ready allow us to test and better understand these new transaction flows as part of a broader, trusted payments ecosystem,” said Gan Pai Li, Group Chief Consumer Banking Officer, Alliance Bank Malaysia Berhad.

“AI is reshaping consumer behaviours and business models at unprecedented speed. Visa Agentic Ready reflects our vision of banking that is intuitive and seamlessly woven into life, providing a structured way for us to test, learn and prepare for agent-initiated payments. This allows us to deliver secure and responsible AI powered experiences to our customers while maintaining the trust and controls our customers expect,” said Gurdip Singh Sidhu, Chief Executive Officer, CIMB Bank Berhad and CIMB Malaysia.

“Agent‑initiated payments introduce new considerations around how transactions are initiated and governed. Visa Agentic Ready gives banks like ours the opportunity to validate these new payment scenarios early, understand the real‑world implications, and assess how they could be supported responsibly before any broader adoption. This kind of structured readiness is important as payment experiences continue to evolve," said Andrew Jong, Managing Director of Personal Financial Services, Hong Leong Bank.

“Trust remains fundamental as new payment experiences emerge. Visa Agentic Ready allows us to explore agent‑initiated payments in a controlled way, helping us build confidence in how these models could scale responsibly — without compromising security or customer control,” said B. Ravintharan A/L K. Balakrishnan, Head, Cards, Group Community Financial Services, Maybank.

Through the controlled, production-grade testing environment, the program validates how agent-initiated payments operate in real world environments, helping issuers build confidence as these new experiences become a reality. 

This effort supports Visa’s broader shift towards intelligent, programmable commerce, where trusted credentials and network capabilities enable payments to respond securely and flexibly to consumer intent, context and controls. As more of the shopping journey becomes automated, this helps ensure agents can act seamlessly on a consumer’s behalf — while keeping people firmly in control.

Visa is working globally with AI platforms and developers, merchants, and ecosystem partners to enable trusted agent initiated payments at scale. Visa Agentic Ready helps ensure issuers are prepared to support these transactions securely and with confidence.

The Asia Pacific launch follows closely after Europe and is building on early global traction with partners. The programme is live and available across Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam in Asia Pacific. Those interested in participating in the Visa Agentic Ready program can contact their Visa account executive for more information.

About Visa
Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, sellers, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.