Visa Launches Agent-Initiated Payment Trials With Scores of UK and European Banks — Traditional Financial Infrastructure Adapts to Autonomous Agents

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Visa has enrolled scores of UK and European banks in issuer trials for agent-initiated payments — transactions executed autonomously by AI agents without per-transaction human authorization. This is traditional financial infrastructure formally adapting to the same agentic commerce layer that World AgentKit and Coinbase's x402 protocol are approaching from the crypto side. Agent-initiated payments without human sign-off at transaction time represents a structural shift in financial risk, compliance, and fraud models.