Visa announced Visa CLI, the first product of its newly branded Visa Crypto Labs division, targeting the emerging market of AI agent payments. This tool is currently in closed beta and can be accessed by request via GitHub authentication.
The product positions Visa’s payments infrastructure as a native layer for “command line commerce.” The term is being used by Cuy Sheffield, head of cryptocurrency at Visa, to describe a new era in which AI agents conduct transactions autonomously, rather than humans interacting with web interfaces. The CLI tool is designed to allow agents to pay for external API calls on demand, without requiring pre-configured accounts or credentials.
Initial use cases listed on the product page include an image generation API, a music generation endpoint, and proprietary data feeds such as market data and research databases locked behind a paywall.
The launch comes as existing payment networks focus on agent commerce from various angles. Stripe’s Tempo blockchain launched mainnet today and also announced Machine Payments Protocol, an open standard for agent-to-agent micropayments that allows agents to pre-approve spending limits and stream payments on an ongoing basis.
Last week, Mastercard announced Verifiable Intent, an open trust framework co-developed with Google that creates an encrypted record of what you authorize when an AI agent acts on your behalf.
Meanwhile, Circle last week launched Nanopayments, built on the x402 standard, on its testnet. It is designed for sub-cent gas-free USDC transactions for AI agents making pay-per-call API payments without an account or credentials.
Competing approaches reveal fault lines in how the industry envisions payment processor payments. While traditional financial players are building a layer of trust on top of existing payment rails, crypto advocates argue that blockchain infrastructure is better suited for a world where AI agents are first-class economic agents. This point was highlighted by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who pointed out that AI agents can own crypto wallets but cannot open bank accounts.
Visa CLI splits the card network rails with a developer-native command-line interface designed for the same autonomous agent use cases that cryptographic protocols are targeted at.
This article was written with the help of AI Workflow. All of our stories are hand-picked, edited and fact-checked by humans.
