Banco Santander and Visa have completed a controlled pilot of agentic commerce transactions across multiple Latin American markets, in a project powered by Visa Intelligent Commerce.

The collaboration, which covered Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, demonstrated how AI agents can securely initiate purchases on behalf of consumers within a regulated payments framework and defined consent parameters.

During the trial, AI agents successfully completed book purchases in Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, while in Brazil the agents bought chocolates, providing a tangible proof point of cross‑market execution.

Santander said the tests were designed to validate the full consumer journey, including consent capture, secure data handling and interoperability across merchants and payment networks. The technology integrates AI agents into the payment process as governed participants, enabling them to initiate transactions within predefined permissions while relying on existing payment infrastructure.

According to the bank, the pilot shows how AI agents could take on routine shopping tasks while maintaining the same security and compliance standards applied to traditional digital payments. The project was conducted within the existing regulatory framework used by both organisations, with transactions executed under established supervisory and compliance standards.

Santander said the initiative is intended to help develop the operational and governance frameworks needed to support the wider adoption of agentic commerce as consumer behaviour evolves.

“This is a major step toward making AI‑assisted shopping a practical reality,” said Matías Sánchez, global head of cards and digital solutions at Banco Santander. “By testing real transactions, we demonstrated how these technologies act as enablers of secure, interoperable agentic commerce that maintains strong consumer protections and issuer controls.”

Visa added that the pilot lays the groundwork for AI‑driven transactions that are secure, seamless and scalable across the payments ecosystem.

Earlier this month Santander and Mastercard announced the successful completion of Europe’s first live end‑to‑end payment executed by an AI agent.

The companies said that payment represented the first agentic transaction carried out within a regulated banking framework and marked a significant milestone in the use of AI systems capable of initiating and completing transactions on behalf of customers.

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