Visa Launches “Agentic Ready” Program in Bahrain to Accelerate Agent-Led Commerce

Manama, Bahrain, May 20, 2026 — Visa, a global leader in digital payments, today announced the launch of its global Agentic Ready program in Bahrain. This launch is part of a broader rollout of the Agentic Ready program across Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA). Visa Agentic Ready is designed to support the payments ecosystem in the era of agent-led commerce.

In its first phase, Visa Agentic Ready focuses on issuer readiness, providing a structured pathway for issuers to test, validate, and understand agent-initiated transactions in a controlled, production-grade environment. The program enables issuers to experience how AI agents initiate complete transactions on behalf of consumers, and to test their readiness to support agentic commerce, while maintaining the trust, control, and protections that underpin the Visa network.

“In Bahrain, we see a strong appetite for innovation, but also a clear need to ensure new payment experiences are introduced in a way that is secure and scalable. As AI begins to play a greater role in commerce, issuers will be central to building consumer confidence,” said Ali Bailoun, Visa’s Senior Vice President and Group General Manager for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Oman.

He continued, “Visa Agentic Ready gives our clients a practical way to understand, test, and prepare for agent-initiated payments, supported by the security, controls and network capabilities that have long underpinned Visa's trusted payment network.”

Visa Agentic Ready is powered by Visa’s foundational network capabilities, bringing together tokens, identity, risk and controls to examine how trusted agent-initiated payments could be enabled across use cases. This builds on Visa Intelligent Commerce — Visa’s portfolio of initiatives and solutions focused on enabling trusted, AI-driven commerce experiences at scale.

From Readiness to Real-World Scale

Bringing agentic commerce to life at scale requires coordination across the payments ecosystem, and Visa has enrolled several partners from across the region into the Visa Agentic Ready program. Early issuing partners engaging in the Visa Agentic Ready program include: Al Salam Bank, Bahrain Islamic Bank, CrediMax, and Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait, with additional partners expected to join later this year.

Through the controlled, production-grade testing environment, the program validates how agent-initiated payments operate in real world environments, helping issuers build confidence as these new experiences become a reality.

This effort supports Visa’s broader shift towards intelligent, programmable commerce, where trusted credentials and network capabilities enable payments to respond securely and flexibly to consumer intent, context and controls. As more of the shopping journey becomes automated, this helps ensure agents can act seamlessly on a consumer’s behalf, while keeping people firmly in control.

Visa is working globally with AI platforms and developers, merchants, and ecosystem partners to enable trusted agent-initiated payments at scale. Visa Agentic Ready helps ensure issuers are prepared to support these transactions securely and with confidence.

About Visa

Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, sellers, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.