Visa Announces $100 Million Investment in AI Companies Shaping the Future of Commerce and Payments
Visa, the payment processing company, has revealed its plans to invest $100 million in companies developing transformative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and applications that impact the future of commerce and payments.
Joining the list of investors who have flocked to this sector this year, Visa is supporting several prominent names in the AI field, such as Microsoft and Google.
Visa Ventures, the company’s global investment arm, has been investing in the sector for 16 years. Visa claims to have been a pioneer in using AI in payments since 1993.
Jack Forrestel, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Visa, said, “Much of generative AI today is focused on tasks and content creation, and this technology is reshaping the way we live and work, fundamentally altering commerce in ways we need to understand.”
Visa Ventures has a significant degree of flexibility regarding the number of investments it makes through the new $100 million fund, the company expects to execute a range of smaller investments worth a few million dollars, given the early stage of the industry. However, it has the capacity to make significant investments when there is a strong rationale for doing so.
Visa is looking to support companies that apply generative AI to solve real-world problems in commerce, payments, and financial technology, including B2B payment operations and infrastructure that could have a profound impact on commerce.
Visa is interested in companies at multiple levels, from data organization to generative AI, and the experiences that users will have in their work or personal lives.
The company stated, “We can be a transformative enabler for companies addressing the next set of challenges to open up commerce more broadly, and this is our way of engaging with those startups.”
Visa is among the giant American financial companies rapidly harnessing the power of the new generations of AI within their operations, achieving early successes with entrepreneurs, the company currently has a market capitalization of $483 billion.
