Since the launch of payment settlement capabilities using stablecoins a year ago in the Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) region, settlement volumes have increased approximately 60-fold.

Cairo : Visa , listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ( V ) and a global leader in digital payments, has unveiled a new suite of AI-based capabilities and solutions, stablecoins, and digital tokens, aimed at enabling its customers in the Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa ( CEMEA ) region to keep pace with the next generation of digital commerce, ahead of the Visa Payments Forum, scheduled to be held in Paris, France, on July 1.

The company explained that the future of commerce is witnessing two major transformations: the increasing reliance on artificial intelligence and stablecoins, which are changing the mechanisms for executing financial transactions and the movement of funds, both in terms of user experience and the infrastructure of payment systems.

Tarek Mahmoud, Visa ’s Regional President for Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said : “Commerce is entering a new phase characterized by increasing intelligence, programmability and integration into everyday experiences. For businesses serving the digital economy, the opportunity is huge, but the need for trust and interoperability is just as important. Visa is focused on providing the infrastructure and technologies needed to help its partners innovate new services that deliver a better experience for consumers and the businesses they serve.”

Enhancing the front end of commerce with artificial intelligence

Visa highlighted how artificial intelligence is reshaping how financial transactions are initiated, approved, and verified, and is accelerating the design and development of new e-commerce experiences. As consumers and businesses increasingly rely on AI-powered agents to execute purchases on their behalf, Visa Intelligent Commerce , Visa’s smart agent-based commerce platform, provides the necessary levels of trust and controls to ensure these transactions are completed securely and reliably.

To support this transformation, Visa is working across the entire payments ecosystem to ensure that transactions initiated by AI agents are transparent and trustworthy. This includes empowering merchants through the Agent Score tool, launched by Visa in partnership with New Generation , which allows merchants to assess their site's readiness for AI-powered commerce and determine how well AI agents can navigate, understand, and complete tasks across their websites.

Merchants also need to know which agents they can trust to process transactions on their sites, while agents need to ensure they are dealing with trusted merchants. With the launch of Agentic Directory , Visa provides a directory of agents and merchants verified as trusted participants in its AI-powered agent-based commerce ecosystem .

Enhancing the role of digital tokens in AI-powered commerce

One of the key drivers of e-commerce growth in the Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA) region is the expansion of tokenization technologies, which has contributed to more secure, convenient, and seamless payments across e-commerce and mobile channels . In the region, Visa has seen a rapid increase in tokenized transactions, rising from 26% in 2023 to 70% in 2026 .

Today’s digital tokens carry a highly secure dataset specifically designed for digital payments. As commerce expands to include new channels and AI-powered agents, Visa is enhancing this data to provide additional details about the type of transaction, where the digital token is used, and the identity of the payment provider. The second key development is the digital token assurance signal, where token usage is evaluated throughout its lifecycle, based on activation data and behavioral history, to create a trust indicator that underpins each transaction .

These developments contribute to strengthening the role of digital tokens as the basis for digital commerce and AI-powered trust-based commerce, giving customers a broader context and a higher level of assurance as transactions become more automated, integrated, and intelligent .

Updating the back-end infrastructure for money movement using stablecoins

Visa showcased its advancements in modernizing settlement processes and value transfers through stablecoins and blockchain-based infrastructure. Through tokenized deposits, the company is developing a technological layer that enables banks to convert traditional deposits into programmable, 24/7 digital money, allowing them to keep pace with the speed and flexibility of stablecoins while maintaining funds within their balance sheets.

Visa is also expanding its settlement experiments using stablecoins across multiple geographic regions, blockchain networks, and different currencies. Based on its initial stablecoin settlement experiments in early 2025, Visa has moved billions of dollars worth of stablecoins through the VisaNet network, at an estimated annual rate of $7 billion through March 2026.

With issuing banks settling transactions via blockchain seven days a week with Visa , the company is working to extend this capability to accepting entities, enhancing the flexibility and redundancy of settlements across the entire ecosystem. Since launching stablecoin settlement capabilities a year ago in the CEMEA region, settlement volumes have increased nearly 60-fold.

To enable consumers and businesses to use stablecoin balances wherever Visa is accepted, the company continues to expand its stablecoin-linked card programs, with more than 160 programs in operation or development globally, and adoption of these programs is expected to accelerate.

Using artificial intelligence to transform insights into actionable intelligence

To help customers meet rising consumer expectations, Visa combines modern infrastructure and data-driven capabilities to support better decision-making throughout the payment journey.

Visa also announced the launch of its " Visa Trip Intelligence " service in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. This service helps banks anticipate their customers' travel needs before transactions are completed. It uses artificial intelligence to analyze VisaNet data, along with third-party data, to infer travel intent, create personalized trip plans, and deliver actionable insights. This enables banks to provide timely pre-travel support, reduce friction in payments, and offer more convenient benefits, services, and experiences for customers during their travels.

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About Visa :

Visa ( NYSE: V ) is a global leader in digital payments, facilitating financial transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide.

Its mission is to connect the world through an innovative, secure and reliable payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to grow and prosper, based on its belief that financial inclusion is a fundamental pillar for the future of money flows and economic opportunities.

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