Santander tests agentic payments with AI agents across five Latin American markets

Santander and Visa Complete Pilot Program Across Latin America

Santander has expanded its exploration of agentic payments through a series of pilot transactions conducted across five Latin American markets in partnership with Visa 1

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. The initiative, which spanned Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, demonstrated how consumers can securely delegate shopping tasks to trusted AI agents through Visa Intelligent Commerce 2

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. AI agents successfully completed online purchases of books in Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, while the transaction in Brazil involved purchasing chocolates, providing tangible proof of cross-market execution 2

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Validating Key Elements of Agentic Commerce

Matías Sánchez, global head of cards and digital solutions at Santander, emphasized that the pilot validated critical components of the consumer journey, including consent capture, secure data handling, and interoperability across merchants and payment networks 1

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. "This is a major step toward making AI-assisted shopping a practical reality," Sánchez stated. "By testing real transactions, we demonstrated how these technologies act as enablers of secure, interoperable agentic commerce that maintains strong consumer protections and issuer controls" 1

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. The focus on robust consumer protections and issuer controls signals that financial institutions are prioritizing security frameworks as they integrate AI agents into payment systems.

Building Infrastructure for AI-Driven Transactions

Catalina Tobar, head of growth products and partnerships for Visa Latin America and the Caribbean, described the pilot as a "defining moment" for commerce in the region 2

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. "Through Visa Intelligent Commerce, we're laying the foundation for AI-driven transactions that are secure, seamless and built for scale -- ensuring every player in the ecosystem is ready for what comes next," Tobar added 2

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. Visa unveiled Visa Intelligent Commerce in April of last year, opening the network's rails to developers building AI agents that search, recommend and make payments on behalf of consumers 2

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Expanding Beyond Latin America to Europe

The Latin America pilot follows closely on the heels of Santander's collaboration with Mastercard, which completed what the companies called Europe's first live end-to-end payment using an artificial intelligence agent just 10 days earlier 2

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. Conducted in a controlled environment using Mastercard's Agent Pay program, this transaction represented the first agentic payment within a regulated banking framework 2

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. The rapid succession of these pilots across multiple continents and with different payment networks demonstrates Santander's commitment to testing agentic commerce infrastructure at scale while maintaining regulatory compliance and security standards across diverse markets.