Autonomous AI agent economy faces infrastructure gaps: Visa, Artemis

Visa and Artemis found that infrastructure bottlenecks are preventing broader commercial adoption of the autonomous AI agent economy.

Artificial intelligence (AI) agents are posing a challenge to the incumbent global card payments infrastructure that is struggling to process high-frequency micropayments, according to a joint report released by payments giant Visa and investment thesis platform Artemis.

The joint report published Wednesday found that traditional cards were built for human commerce with low-frequency transactions, which is insufficient for AI agents, which need infrastructure with near-zero fees and faster settlement to make agentic micropayments commercially viable.

New infrastructure is increasingly necessary since AI agents crossed a key capability threshold in mid-2025, enabling them to discover unfamiliar APIs, evaluate prices and decide on autonomous payments.