Visa, BILL & Billtrust pilot AI agents for invoice payments

Visa, BILL and Billtrust have launched a live pilot that lets AI agents complete approved invoice payments through supplier portals. The trial is processing end-to-end transactions between participating buyers and suppliers.

The project targets a longstanding obstacle in business payments: supplier portals often require human authentication and manual data entry even after an invoice has been approved. In the pilot, an authorised BILL payment agent can initiate a card payment on a buyer's behalf, and Billtrust can recognise and authenticate that agent so the payment can be completed within the supplier portal.

The arrangement is designed for a narrow use case, not autonomous payment decision-making. The AI agent does not decide whether a payment should be made. It executes payments that the buyer has already approved and that remain subject to controls linked to that instruction.

The trial uses elements of Visa's Intelligent Commerce portfolio, including its Trusted Agent Protocol and Agentic Directory. These tools are intended to let a receiving platform recognise an AI agent and use tokenised payment credentials instead of shared supplier portal logins.

That matters because many accounts payable systems still break down at the final stage of payment submission. Finance teams may automate invoice capture, approval workflows and payment scheduling, but employees often still need to sign into supplier portals and manually enter payment details, particularly when anti-bot systems and login requirements block machine-driven access.

Manual barrier

The pilot aims to remove that final manual step without handing control of payment decisions to software. The model ties payment controls to the customer's approved payment instruction, uses a payment path linked to a specific invoice, and gives both sides visibility into the transaction's authorisation and completion.

For BILL, the trial also tests whether more supplier invoices can be paid by card in cases where portal restrictions have pushed buyers towards ACH transfers or cheques. For Billtrust, which works on the accounts receivable side, the model offers a way for suppliers to accept portal-based payments from recognised business agents while retaining their own acceptance policies and reconciliation processes.

That could affect cash flow on both sides of a transaction. Suppliers may receive payment faster if a portal can accept a trusted automated submission, while buyer finance teams may spend less time on repetitive payment tasks.

Mark Nelsen, Senior Vice President and Head of Product, Commercial & Money Movement Solutions at Visa, described the trial as a test of whether AI agents can operate across separate business systems with controls in place.

"Businesses should not have to choose between automation and control when making payments," said Mark Nelsen, Senior Vice President and Head of Product, Commercial & Money Movement Solutions at Visa. "This pilot applies agentic commerce to a real B2B payment problem by having trusted agents complete payments across platforms. Working with BILL and Billtrust, we are testing how identity, payment controls and transaction visibility can make that model work."

Cross-platform trust

The companies are positioning the pilot within a broader push to define how AI agents can act on behalf of businesses in tightly governed financial workflows. In consumer markets, agent-based commerce has largely focused on shopping assistance and recommendations. In business payments, the challenge is different: software must work within approval chains, supplier rules and fraud controls already embedded in procurement and finance systems.

BILL said supplier portals have been a persistent source of friction because they often force a human back into the workflow. The company says nearly 500,000 businesses use its platform.

"Nearly 500,000 businesses trust BILL to move, manage and maximize their money, and that trust depends on removing friction without sacrificing accuracy and security of supplier payments. For too long, supplier portals have been friction points, requiring a person to manually complete what should be an automated step," said Archana Prasad, Senior Vice President of Payments and Financial Services at BILL. "With Visa and Billtrust, BILL's AI-powered payments technology is closing that gap: the payment gets done, the supplier gets paid faster, and finance teams get their time back."

Billtrust said the supplier side of the process also depends on trust and clarity over who or what is submitting a payment. Supplier portals typically need enough information to accept a payment, apply it correctly, and maintain a record that aligns with internal policy.

"Agentic commerce will only move forward if businesses can trust agents to operate across systems with the same clarity and accountability they expect from people," said Kunal Patel, Senior Vice President of Payments at Billtrust. "By connecting buyer-side invoice approval with supplier-side payment acceptance, this pilot shows how authorised agents can complete business transactions, releasing trapped cash faster while adhering to a complex acceptance policy and preserving visibility and control for both sides."

Billtrust said its network includes more than 20 million buyers and handles annual trade credit volume of USD $1 trillion.