Real-time agency-based trading: Banca Transilvania has successfully completed the first payment initiated through...

Banca Transilvania (BT), in collaboration with Visa, has completed its first payment initiated by an AI agent on behalf of a customer at Brick Depot-a^LEGO® Certified Store and BT partner merchant-as part of a pilot phase featuring real-world experiences with AI-assisted commerce in Europe. The initiative is part of the Visa Agentic Ready program. The payment was processed using real card data and existing merchant infrastructure, demonstrating how AI agents can securely complete purchases on behalf of consumers using today's payment infrastructure.

This development follows Visa's announcement at the Visa Payments Forum in Paris on July 1 that AI agents can now make real purchases directly from merchants participating in the pilot project across various sectors, including retail and tourism. Within this broader context of the payments ecosystem, Banca Transilvania is exploring how these new experiences can be offered to customers in Romania securely and at scale.

Artificial intelligence-based tools are increasingly helping consumers search for information, compare options, and make purchasing decisions. In fact, Romania is among the markets in Central and Eastern Europe where the use of AI for travel planning, for example, has already become common practice. Nearly two-thirds of Romanians use AI-based tools when planning their vacations, and Romania has the highest percentage of users who rely on AI to create itineraries (31%).*

As these technologies become increasingly sophisticated, the payments industry is exploring the possibility of a digital assistant securely completing a payment on a person's behalf, with their consent and under their full control. The pilot under the Visa Agentic Ready program demonstrates how payments initiated by AI agents can function in everyday shopping scenarios, while ensuring that customer consent, issuer controls, and existing safeguards are maintained.

As customer expectations continue to evolve, it is important to explore ways in which new payment experiences can combine innovation with trust. Our collaboration with Visa through the Agentic Ready program allows us to contribute to the next phase of the payments ecosystem, in which AI agents can make payments on behalf of customers, using an infrastructure that already ensures scalability, security, and control.

Oana Ilaș
Deputy General Manager, Retail Banking
Banca Transilvania

Based on the same trusted infrastructure used today

The payment initiated by the AI agent was processed through the Visa Intelligent Commerce platform, using the same core technologies that support secure digital payments today. These include well-established capabilities such as tokenization, identity verification, and real-time fraud monitoring.

For this pilot project, Visa Payment Passkey was used to support compliance with Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements in Europe and to demonstrate how AI-assisted payment flows can operate in accordance with the current regulatory framework.

AI agents have proven their ability to initiate payments in real-world environments, and our role is to ensure that every payment remains secure, transparent, and trustworthy. By connecting banks, merchants, and AI systems through our network, we are enabling this new era of commerce, leveraging Visa's existing infrastructure and security measures.

Elena Ungureanu
Country Manager, Visa in Romania

By participating in the Visa Agentic Ready program, Banca Transilvania is contributing to the industry's broader efforts to understand and responsibly develop the future of AI-powered payments.

*The data comes from the Visa CEE Travel and Payment Intentions Study 2025, conducted in Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. The study was conducted by the research firm GfK - a NIQ Company in March 2025, using a representative sample of 1,000 respondents (aged 18-65) in each of these countries.