The way money moves is being rebuilt in real-time.
AI agents that can transact on your behalf. Digital wallets are becoming the center of commerce. Stablecoins are evolving to enable the movement of value instantly across borders.
This is an exciting moment. Entirely new business models are taking shape. Products that didn’t exist a year ago are already reaching customers. And many of the biggest opportunities haven’t even been imagined yet.
But there’s a catch: to participate in this next era, your payments infrastructure has to keep up.
That’s where Visa comes in.
Innovation without overhaul
For a long time, modernization initiatives were tackled through large scale transformations. Institutions were asked to make high-stake choices to upgrade and change systems that have powered (and will continue to do so) decades of growth and trust. The options were tough: stay on legacy cores or replace everything at once.
But the options have shifted.
Instead of multi-year programs, modern infrastructure is delivered as SaaS on public cloud, so institutions can scale up and down without committing to fixed infrastructure footprints. And it is open by design, making it easier to connect to new payment schemes, partners, and value-added services over time.
This is where Pismo stands out. As a platform built for modern commerce, Pismo supports deposit accounts, cards, lending, and digital wallets in one place. This gives banks a more flexible foundation, making it easier to launch new products and bring them to market faster.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- Launching new products faster: Banks can introduce new offerings — including digital-first cards or stablecoin-linked products — in weeks, not years. Visa and Pismo teamed up with ABN AMRO to power BUUT’s challenger card targeted at Gen Z consumers. BUUT’s debit card was created in just 10 weeks using Pismo’s cloud-native platform.
- Connecting new forms of money to everyday commerce: While issuers remain responsible for managing balance controls, stablecoin-backed cards help bridge digital asset balances with traditional payments, making it easier to spend them anywhere Visa is accepted.
- Enabling real-time, always-on financial services: From account balances to transaction processing, modern systems keep everything in sync — so customers can move money in near real time.
- Unlocking new possibilities with tokenized deposits: Banks can offer programmable, always-available money that can power next-generation use cases, from smart contracts to real-world asset transactions.
Infrastructure that can keep up with digital commerce
Modernization, however, is not only about the core. The payments ecosystem itself is changing: more channels, more payment types, more participants, and higher expectations for uptime and performance. Infrastructure has to keep pace with that complexity.
Visa Acceptance Platform reflects this need. It provides a modular foundation that gives clients access to pre-integrated services at global scale, including card-present and digital acceptance, token management, fraud and risk tools, and merchant boarding capabilities. Merchants using the platform have seen a 2.97% higher approval rate, 70 basis points lower fraud, and 99.999%¹ uptime, demonstrating how infrastructure changes can translate into better commercial outcomes.
Every authorization as a strategic decision
As payments become faster and more complex, even small improvements can have a big impact. With the arrival of agentic commerce, authorization and authentication must evolve to meet the moment.
Intelligent Commerce Connect builds on this shift by giving businesses a simple way to participate in AI-driven commerce. Available through the Visa Acceptance Platform, it provides a single integration that allows agents to pay and merchants to securely accept those transactions at scale. By bringing together payment initiation, tokenization, and authentication, it helps more transactions move efficiently into the authorization moment.
This is where many businesses still face challenges. Authorization is often managed with fragmented data, static rules, and after-the-fact analysis. These limitations reduce performance at the point where revenue is either captured or lost.
Modern infrastructure changes that. Visa Intelligent Authorization, available as part of the Visa Acceptance Platform, is designed to help acquirers modernize payment processing through a single API connection. It can process transactions across major card networks through one integration, supports 99.999% uptime, and has achieved an average approval rate of around 96.3% globally², using machine learning and network signals to inform decisions in real time.
The result is a shift from a reactive to a proactive operating model where approval rates, consistency, and customer experience become competitive advantages, not constraints.
Building for what’s next: turning infrastructure into a competitive advantage
Every major shift in commerce — from ecommerce to mobile — has expanded opportunity across the ecosystem.
We believe this moment will be no different.
AI, stablecoins, and digital wallets are more than just new features; they’re part of a broader transformation in how money moves, how businesses operate, and how consumers engage.
To capture that opportunity, companies need infrastructure that can scale, adapt, and evolve in real time.
Visa’s value-added services provide that foundation, helping our clients move faster, innovate confidently, and grow with the next era of commerce.