Visa, BILL and Billtrust run a live pilot of AI agents paying supplier invoices by card through portals

Visa, BILL and Billtrust said on 20 October 2026 that they have started a live pilot in which an AI agent pays approved supplier invoices end to end through supplier payment portals. The companies call it the first live pilot of trusted agent payments between buyer and supplier platforms. It is processing real transactions for participating buyers that use BILL and suppliers that use Billtrust. On the buyer side, BILL's Payment Agent is registered with Visa and makes card payments with tokenised credentials, under controls tied to payment instructions the buyer has already approved. The agent does not decide what to pay; it only carries out eligible, approved payments. On the supplier side, Billtrust uses Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol, part of the Visa Intelligent Commerce portfolio, to recognise and authenticate the agent and let it complete the payment. That replaces the logins, CAPTCHA checks and other bot blocks that usually stop automation at portals. Each payment uses a token instead of a shared portal login and follows a path specific to that invoice, and both sides can see when it is authorised and completed. No end date or pilot volumes were given. BILL says it serves nearly 500,000 businesses, and Billtrust cites more than 20 million buyers and $1 trillion in annual trade credit volume. For merchants that sell to other businesses, this is an early sign that agent-initiated card payments will reach accounts receivable as well as consumer checkouts. Suppliers that are mostly paid by ACH or cheque may receive more card payments, which can shorten days sales outstanding but adds card acceptance costs. It also means portals will need to tell trusted agents apart from the bots they currently block.