Thredd, the AI-first issuer processing platform, today announced it has joined the Visa Agentic Ready programme, enabling issuers across Europe to participate in agent-initiated payments without rebuilding their payments infrastructure. Consumer payments platform Zilch will be among the first issuers on the platform to enable agent-initiated payments for its cardholders. As a processor and enabler, Thredd sits at the trust layer of the payments ecosystem, ready to support Visa and its clients as the market moves into agentic commerce.
Thredd joins Visa Agentic Ready programme for agent-initiated payments across Europe.
Zilch among first issuers to enable agent-initiated payments for cardholders.
Visa Payment Passkey confirms cardholder intent through biometric authentication.
Agent tokenisation scopes tokens to agents with permissions and controls.
Agent fraud monitoring addresses execution drift and abnormal velocity.
Thredd processes billions of transactions annually across 50+ countries.
Jim McCarthy, CEO of Thredd, stated: "Every major shift in payments requires a trusted layer that can turn ecosystem complexity into scalable capability. Agentic commerce is no different. As AI agents become a new participant in the payments journey, issuers need a way to embrace innovation without compromising security, customer control or speed to market. Through our participation in the Visa Agentic Ready programme, Thredd is providing that bridge, enabling issuers across Europe to become agent-ready through the platform they already trust."
Agentic commerce introduces a new type of payment initiator: an AI agent acting on a cardholder's behalf. The core payments principles do not change. Cardholder permission, issuer approval, authentication and fraud monitoring all still apply. Taking a Zilch customer as an example, a cardholder might ask an AI agent to find a product within a set budget. The agent returns a recommendation, and with a single confirmation the cardholder instructs it to complete the purchase using their Zilch card. A Visa Payment Passkey confirms the cardholder's intent through biometric authentication.
The foundation for day-one network enablement is in place today through tokenisation via Visa Token Service (VTS), device binding linking tokens to trusted devices, and Visa Payment Passkeys for secure biometric authentication. Building on this foundation, Thredd is developing agent-specific capabilities including agent tokenisation with specialised tokens scoped to agents with permissions and controls, and agent fraud monitoring with transaction rules built for agent behaviour addressing patterns such as execution drift and abnormal velocity.
Philip Belamant, CEO at Zilch, stated: "Agentic commerce represents a fundamental shift in how payments will work, and getting the infrastructure right from the outset is critical. By partnering with Thredd and joining Visa's Agentic Ready programme, we're ensuring that as AI agents become a natural part of how our customers shop and spend, the trust, security and control that defines the Zilch experience remains intact."
About Zilch
Zilch is an intelligent payments platform designed to save customers time and money. The all-in-one solution combines debit, credit, instalments, earned wage access, credit building, deals and rewards. Over 6 million customers have saved more than £750 million in fees and interest. Zilch drives more than £2.5 billion to its partner merchants annually.
About Visa
Visa is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories.
About Thredd
Thredd is the trusted, AI-first, cloud-enabled issuer processing platform powering the next generation of global payments. Through a single API, unified platform, Thredd delivers debit, credit, digital wallet and ledger capabilities to over 100 fintech, digital banks and embedded finance providers across 50+ countries, processing billions of transactions annually.
