Webit 2026: Designing a programmable future for commerce & payments - Petya Rusinova

This talk, presented by Petia Roussinova from Visa, explores the concept of programmability in the future of commerce and payments as shaped by artificial intelligence. The speaker discusses the ongoing convergence of identity, choice, and experience in payment systems, emphasizing how programmability connects these elements to enhance consumer interactions. Roussinova highlights the pivotal role of intelligent agents in facilitating payments and personalizing consumer experiences in real-time. She further explains the significance of verifiable credentials and stable coins in fostering trust and efficiency within financial transactions. The presentation concludes with a call for collaboration across the industry to embrace this programmable future.

Artificial intelligence is changing how decisions are made, but equally important is how value moves because every new economic era requires new infrastructure. Infrastructure for trust, infrastructure for identity, infrastructure for commerce, and infrastructure for payments. For decades, Visa has been one of the foundational platforms powering the global economy, connecting consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments across more than 200 countries [music] and territories. Today, as AI agents begin

to participate in commerce itself, the future of payments is becoming intelligent, seamless, and increasingly [music] autonomous. Please welcome Petia Roussinova from Visa with her keynote, Designing [music] a Programmable Future for Commerce and Payments. >> Hello everyone. I'm very happy to be at Webit today with you. Uh It's hard to start the presentation without talking about the overwhelming amount of change that is happening in our industry. The

speed of change is striking. In payments, we are seeing what I call the big convergence. Convergence of identity and payments, convergence of payment rails and funding sources, convergence of experience, where we are both solving once for a consistent physical and digital experience, while still bringing identity and choice closer to the consumers. The next question is if identity, choice, and experience are converging, what is the element that

connects them all? I believe this is programmability. And in fact, this is my narrative to articulate today the future of consumer The topic of convergence is more relevant than ever, but over the last 12 months, another powerful force accelerated this transformation. The artificial intelligence. Sometimes it's easy to forget that those generative AI platforms that today we are used every day are 4 years old. And now the

top three platforms already have one 1.4 billion active users every month. Now, behind that, behind what we interact with every day is code. Code is everywhere. Let me ask you a quick question. How many of you would consider yourself as a coder or would have a coding background? Not quite a lot. Maybe I will prove you are wrong till the end of the presentation. I asked one

of the largest LLMs to help me illustrate this. This is Mr. Coffee, automatic coffee maker. at the in the latest uh '70s and '80s in on market in Europe, these coffee machines emerged with timer. I remember I was a very small kid when we had such a machine. A similar one, not exactly the same. I don't remember quite well. Of course, we received it as a present

from abroad because it was not possible to buy such a machine in Bulgaria these years. But, you know what was the cool thing about it? At 7:00 a.m. I still remember the smell of a fresh coffee that was waking me up because the coffee was ready as it has been programmed. In fact, this was my father's first line of code. Every night, he was programming the machine

before going to bed. So, what exactly programmability means uh in practice for consumer businesses and commerce. We are already programming our lives in many ways like my father with his coffee machine. We are scheduling deliveries. We are selecting playlists, setting direct debits, or sending money to our saving accounts every month. For sure, it has evolved. The graphical interfaces gives you choice. Toggle right, toggle off. Drag and

drop. >> [clears throat] >> But, we can say that it's still very simplistic. But, these experiences still require us to manually configure and manage them. So, the next step is not better in the interfaces. Next step is autonomy. We are interactive, not very configurable, and definitely not So, we are moving from users of payments to programmers of our financial lives. with this shift underway, a natural question

emerges. What happens to commerce and payments in a programmable world? Or in other words, what happens when the consumers stop navigating payment products, but simply describes the outcomes. So, first, let me define what programmability means in payments. It is a shift to financial systems where the consumer or business intent can be expressed in natural language and executed automatically. Now, having a definition, why don't we apply apply

it to what we already see happening in payments, the big convergence I mentioned at the beginning? Let's see the three elements that already define the modern payments today: identity, choice, experience. Programmability will not replace them. It will connect them. By adding a programmability layer to them, we will start answering three merchant questions. How do we personalize experiences without fragmenting them? How do we offer choice without increasing

friction? And how do we do all this at scale with the same level of trust that we know today? And here some answers. By verifiable credential that will verify intent or identity status. Event and data-driven payments or financial transactions that operate with clear permissions. And agent-based execution that acts on behalf of users when they give their consent and within the merchants defined rails. Now, let's have a

look at some of the changes that are already happening for all these three elements. Experience. Here, we clearly see agent playing central roles. And I would say we are already there. Experience is the first idea where programmability becomes visible for It is a matter of just couple of months that all of you will have fully experienced agentic payment transaction. We are very excited and we invested a

lot in this space. Last year, we introduced our Visa intelligent commerce service and now we are progressing with many ongoing projects in Europe. And beginning of this year, we introduced another platform uh Visa agentic ready program that uh helps our partners to test and build confidence in agent experience. But what exactly agentic commerce means in practice? Imagine telling your trusted agent, "Find me a blue T-shirt in

a specific design, this size, that amount." Or, "Find me the best itinerary for next month's trip within this budget. Use my points first and make a transaction only if my account balance remains above a threshold." The agent could coordinate across merchants, wallets, and accounts and then will trigger a transaction only if the conditions set by the consumer are met. Very important is that it all starts with

explicit consent. People decide what the agent can do, for how long, and on which accounts. And they can change or revoke those permissions at any time. also can significantly enhance the existing propositions, especially in travel, everyday spend, and premium commerce. It is not adding more benefits, but it's delivering the right benefit in the right context at the right moment. take lounge access as an example. Instead of

static entitlements, the access can be packaged and triggered in the moment based on the consumer status, time, location, or transaction context. So, the shift here is simple. Moving from static benefits to intelligent benefits. If experience is more about relevance, choice is more about flexibility. When we talk about choice and programmability, it's hard not to mention stable coins as a good example. For merchants, the near-term value is

operational. Faster settlement, more efficient cross-border payments, improved treasury and liquidity management, and on top of that, stable are giving new models, like stable coin back card or cards acting like a stable coin wallets and on-chain lending. And none of these can work without trust. And here is where identity becomes critical. Identity will evolve. Verifiable credentials are allowing us to confirm intent, to ensure that conditions are met

between trusted parties, and to unlock new transaction types without compromising security. For merchants, this means things like age and eligibility verification without friction, delegated purchases in B2B or flows, and seamless repeat authentication across channels. And because I'm a product person and in order this this programmable world to happen in payments, I believe this should build the programmability within. I call it designing for programmability. And if the

programmability is the destination, those are the foundations required to get there. Some of them are emerging and not true if you're building the solution like a merchant issuer, acquirer, or payment network. But all these foundations creates a smart translation layer where intent becomes instructions, instructions become actions, and actions continuously will improve over time. The good news is that this future doesn't require a new network. It requires

the existing networks to become programmable. And accordingly, we started evolving Visa stack. In tokenization, the token or the encrypted card credentials becomes identic token to be used in identic Click to pay. seamless and secure checkout becomes a native digital credential that can be retrieved on demand. Digital identity. Passkeys will connect to verifiable credentials and biometric authentication will become a verified intent or For merchants, the value is

not stitching all these pieces together, but it's leveraging the interoperability standards and scale built in the I don't have time, so let's wrap up. The programmable commerce will not emerge from a single product or a company. It depends on how we will move together as an ecosystem. The invitation for everybody in this room is clear. Lean into this future with us. Programmability is where the payments are

heading. And the winners will not be those with the most technology, but will be those that will best translate the human intent into trusted experiences. When the mind is so intelligently gifted, the question and the opportunity is how we design for a world that keeps up. Thank you very much.