Visa is laying out its case that AI agents, tokenized credentials, and stablecoins will collectively reshape how money moves across Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The card network reports that tokenized transactions in the CEMEA region have grown from 26% of volume in 2023 to a projected 70% by 2026, a near-tripling that suggests tokenized payment infrastructure has already become the default rather than the experiment. The company is now publicly framing AI agents and stablecoins as the next capabilities it is building into its network, a notable shift for a legacy payments incumbent that has historically moved cautiously on crypto-native settlement.
The Numbers Behind Visa’s Tokenization Push
The 26%-to-70% figure for tokenized transactions in CEMEA is the strongest data point in Visa’s announcement, and it deserves scrutiny. Tokenization here refers primarily to card credential tokenization — replacing PANs with device-level tokens through Apple Pay, Google Pay, and similar services — rather than stablecoin or on-chain tokenization. That distinction matters because it sets a baseline: the region’s payment infrastructure has already undergone one round of abstraction, making a second round involving stablecoins logistically and behaviorally less of a leap. The CEMEA region encompasses markets with widely varying levels of banking penetration, card acceptance, and regulatory maturity, which means Visa’s aggregate numbers likely mask significant country-level variation. Still, the trajectory is unambiguous, and it gives Visa a credible foundation for arguing that the next phase — agent-driven and stablecoin-based payments — will follow a similar adoption curve.
Where AI Agents Fit In
Visa’s mention of AI agents is deliberately forward-looking but vague on specifics. The payments giant is signaling that it expects autonomous software to become a meaningful transaction initiator — agents that discover services, negotiate terms, and execute payments without a human pressing a button at each step. This aligns with the broader agentic commerce thesis that companies like Coinbase, Stripe, and OKX have been building toward. The open question is whether Visa intends to route agent payments through its existing card network — which would require solving the per-transaction authorization and fraud-detection problems that currently assume human initiators — or whether it plans to build parallel infrastructure that accommodates machine-initiated stablecoin transfers. Given that Visa’s core business depends on card-network fees, the architectural choice will reveal how seriously the company takes the threat of disintermediation from on-chain settlement.
Stablecoins as Settlement Infrastructure
Visa’s stablecoin framing is the most strategically interesting element. The company has previously worked with Circle on USDC settlement for cross-border payments, and Solana has been positioned as a potential settlement layer for high-frequency card transactions. By naming stablecoins as a core future capability alongside tokenization and AI agents, Visa is acknowledging that stablecoin-based settlement is moving from pilot-stage exploration to something closer to production planning. For the CEMEA region specifically, where cross-border remittances and B2B payments remain expensive and slow, stablecoin settlement rails could offer measurable cost and speed improvements over correspondent banking. The competitive landscape is also relevant: Mastercard has joined the OpenStandard consortium alongside Aptos, Stripe, and BlackRock, meaning Visa’s rival is already aligning with crypto-native infrastructure for stablecoin issuance and settlement.
What to Watch
The gap between Visa’s public positioning and concrete product launches is the main thing to monitor. Announcing capabilities is different from shipping them. Watch for whether Visa names specific stablecoin partners, blockchain networks, or agent-payment protocols in subsequent announcements. The CEMEA rollout will also be worth tracking region by region — the United Arab Emirates has already established a regulatory framework for digital assets, while many African markets remain in earlier stages. If Visa begins piloting agent-initiated transactions in specific CEMEA markets, that would be a stronger signal than any roadmap slide. Finally, the competitive dynamic with Mastercard’s OpenStandard work suggests the two card networks may end up on different sides of a standards war over how stablecoin and agent payments get routed.
Sources
- https://techlabari.com/visa-bets-on-ai-agents-and-stablecoins-to-rewire-how-money-moves-in-africa-and-the-middle-east/
- https://www.ghanaweb.com/blogs/mindofthewriter/Visa-outlines-AI-Token-and-Stablecoin-capabilities-shaping-the-future-of-commerce-19028
- https://www.cointrust.com/market-news/aptos-teams-up-with-visa-mastercard-for-open-usd-stablecoin