How Visa Is Using Data And AI To Transform The Digital Payments Industry
Visa Credit Card
Visa (NYSE: V), a world leader in digital payments, is using data and AI to transform the payments industry in ways that are aimed at creating new opportunities for the individuals, businesses, and economies it serves. An American multinational payment card services corporation, Visa was founded in 1958 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Today, Visa facilitates transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories.
I recently spoke with Visa chief data officer Andres Vives about how data and AI are transforming the payments industry and what the future will look like. Before joining Visa in July 2024, Vives served as enterprise chief data and analytics officer for TD Bank and at Citibanamex. Prior to this, Vives spent 15 years with Capital One in a series of roles including managing vice president and head of Big Data transformation. I first got to know Vives a few years ago when he joined me as a participant on a chief data officer (CDO) panel that I moderated at the MIT Chief Data Officer Symposium. At that time, Vives was in his CDO role at TD Bank.
Discussing his role and mandate at Visa, Vives explains, 'As chief data officer, I am committed to making the most of our data assets.' He elaborates, 'My role is really about two things--finding creative ways to put our data to work for our clients and internal decision-makers and making sure we're always using our data responsibly to uphold our brand of trust.' Vives continues, 'I work closely with the product and technology teams to find the balance between innovation and trust.' He notes that 'In one year alone, one of our risk models helped to proactively block $40 USD billion in fraud.' Vives adds, 'An important part of my job is understanding the balance between measuring business value and uplifting the payments ecosystem.'
Data, analytics, and AI are central to the business operations of Visa. Vives notes, 'Visa is inherently a data-driven company. We've invested $3.5B in AI and data infrastructure over the last ten years to ensure our network and solutions can advance at the pace at which AI is advancing.' He elaborates, 'Data is our biggest asset at Visa. We process more than 300B transactions a year - that's a lot of data crossing our network daily', says Vives. He continues, 'We see a tremendous amount of value in data and AI to improve the way we help consumers and businesses pay and be paid.' Vives adds, 'And without data, there is no AI.'
Visa has been delivering secure, reliable data experiences for decades. Vives explains, 'It's the combination of innovative capabilities with rock-solid trust that has enabled us to partner with financial institutions for many years and now AI companies, delivering delightful, personalized experiences founded on consumer consent.' He continues, 'Everything we do at Visa revolves around trust.' Vives comments, 'If data is used responsibly, not only can we build products and solutions more efficiently, but we can also fuel better commerce interactions with our fraud prevention and identification solutions and create delightful shopping experiences for our consumers.'
Using data and AI isn't a new concept for Visa. Vives notes, 'We were the first network to deploy AI-based technology for risk and fraud management, pioneering the use of AI models in payments security over 30 years ago.' The pace at which AI is evolving is now unlocking new ways to use data and AI within Visa for the benefit of its customer. Vives comments, 'We believe that we can build a better Visa through data, analytics and AI and it's not enough to have a great data and AI team.'
It is necessary that all Visa employees have a data-driven mindset. Vives explains, 'We are democratizing data and AI across to fuel innovation for our clients and to empower our leaders and employees.' As an example of the Visa approach to AI, the company has given all employees access to secure instances of gen AI models like ChatGPT and Claude to drive higher productivity and help make more informed, data-driven decisions. Vives comments, 'Our data is super rich and through things like Data Tokens and personalization insights, we're helping to deliver the experiences that consumers have come to expect.' He adds, 'But here's what sets us apart - all these data-driven experiences we create are built on a foundation of trust.'
Visa's payment technologies, including tokenization and authentication APIs, are helping enable transactions to be secure and seamless, providing confidence for consumers using AI to shop and buy. Visa Data Tokens, for example, securely enable the creation of insights throughout the consumer data lifecycle to power AI experiences. After consumers opt in to the experience, Visa issues a private Data Token to the merchant complete with AI-generated insights based on the consumer's transaction data. The data token can be used with the merchant's AI models to deliver real-time recommendations for the shopper, without compromising consumer data. Vives notes 'We're committed to doing this in a way that's completely transparent and with proper data consent.'
Last month, Visa announced the release of its Intelligent Commerce initiative. In collaboration with Anthropic, IBM, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, Perplexity, Samsung, and Stripe, among others, VISA announced that 'it is bringing the power of its network and decades-long expertise to bring trust and security to AI-driven commerce.'
This new initiative opens Visa's payment network to developers and engineers that are building foundational AI agents that are transforming commerce. Visa Intelligent Commerce enables AI agents to find, shop, and buy for consumers based on their pre-selected preferences. Each consumer sets the limits, and Visa helps to manage the rest. Vives comments, 'Today's AI agents are pretty good at helping with product discovery, but they can't actually transact on your behalf. With Visa Intelligent Commerce, we're changing that.'
Features of Visa Intelligent Commerce include:
Vives comments, 'We are enabling AI commerce in a secure, transparent way by giving agents the ability to handle payments using the latest ecommerce standards like authentication and tokenization.' He continues, 'This isn't just another product. We've partnered with leading AI platforms to bring this to life, and we're helping the entire ecosystem build agents that are transacting safely.' Vives notes, 'The Intelligent Commerce Initiative will make shopping experiences more personal, more secure and more convenient as they become powered by AI.'
Reflecting on the data and AI journey that Visa has undertaken, Vives comments, 'Data and AI are a part of Visa's DNA. Our founder Dee Hock had a vision for a world where money was simply alphanumeric data moving around the world at the speed of light.' He continues, 'We are, and we have to be, a purely data-driven company. We need to democratize our data not only for our clients but internally, so that it's both safe and fast.' Some of the ways in which data is being incorporated across all aspects of Visa's operations include:
Looking ahead to the future, Vives explains, 'AI has been an integral part of Visa for over 30 years, and we continue to see the value and impact in our investments.' He continues, 'Today, our technology platform has more than 300 AI models live and running, spanning risk management, cybersecurity and operations, and our Visa Protect solutions help to prevent fraud across the entire payment journey.' Vives adds, 'Today our leaders uphold this vision, understanding that data and insights are what makes our business valuable, without compromising the care of consumer data.'
Vives sums up the data and AI vision of Visa. 'Our goal is to ensure everyone across Visa can access data and analytics to harness the power of AI as it continues to evolve', says Vives. He continues, 'Looking forward, this is going to become even more important. We are committed to continue to be at the forefront of AI innovation.' Vives concludes, 'We win when VISA becomes a trusted partner to the entire ecosystem.'
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