Visa, BILL and Billtrust launch live pilot letting AI agents pay B2B invoices

Visa, BILL (NYSE: BILL) and Billtrust launched what they describe as the first live pilot for automating business-to-business invoice payments with AI agents on October 20, 2026, and it is already processing real transactions. The pilot went live in Las Vegas. Its pitch is that an agent can handle the payment process end to end without the manual logins and verification steps that typically stall automation in accounts payable. How the pilot works The setup has three layers, each supplied by a different company. Visa provides the trust framework. The pilot runs on Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol, part of its Intelligent Commerce portfolio. It gives merchants and portals a way to recognize which AI agents are legitimate before letting them transact. BILL supplies the agent itself. Its AI-powered Payment Agent registers with Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol using tokenized credentials. A tokenized credential swaps the real card or account number for a stand-in, so the sensitive details never travel with the payment. Billtrust provides the other side of the transaction. Suppliers in the pilot are authenticated through Billtrust’s portals, which is where BILL’s agent arrives to settle invoi...