Visa, BILL and Billtrust have launched a live pilot allowing authorised AI agents to complete approved buyer invoice payments through supplier portals.
The initiative addresses a longstanding constraint in payment portals, where human authentication requirements have limited automation even when payments have already been approved.
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Using Visa Intelligent Commerce capabilities, including the Visa Trusted Agent Protocol, the pilot enables AI agents to be “securely authenticated” to credentialed supplier portals.
This allows agents to make payments previously dependent on manual input while suppliers retain control and oversight.
The process begins with the authorised BILL Payment Agent, registered through Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol and Agentic Directory. It uses tokenised payment credentials and controls aligned with the buyer’s approved payment instructions to make payments for BILL customers.
Visa Intelligent Commerce supports BILL’s automation of card payments for supplier invoices. Once payment is initiated, Billtrust uses Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol to identify, authenticate and grant access to the authorised agent.
The arrangement enables BILL to complete invoice payments for customers through supplier portals without using shared login credentials.
For suppliers using Billtrust, the pilot offers a route to accept payments initiated by recognised business agents while retaining payment information needed for processing and reconciliation under existing acceptance policies.
For BILL customers, the pilot seeks to remove the final manual stage of entering payment information into supplier portals, reducing administrative work for finance teams.
Visa head of product, commercial & money movement solutions Mark Nelsen said: “Businesses should not have to choose between automation and control when making payments.
“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.”
Billtrust SVP payments Kunal Patel said: “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.”
