Visa, BILL and Billtrust have begun a live pilot in which a payment agent executes end-to-end business invoice settlements between participating buyers on BILL and suppliers on Billtrust. The BILL Payment Agent acts only on buyer-approved payment instructions; it cannot choose invoices independently. Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol lets Billtrust verify the agent’s cryptographic identity, while invoice-specific tokenized credentials replace exposed portal credentials and physical card data. The pilot addresses a longstanding obstacle to accounts-payable automation: supplier portals often treat automated activity as a potential security threat. Visa also launched Commercial Fraud Solutions to authenticate virtual-card activity and validate supplier credentials before authorization. The companies plan to assess expansion across platforms after initial acceptance benchmarks. They have not disclosed pilot transaction volume or identified the participating enterprises, leaving the scale and broader applicability of the approach unproven.
