Visa, BILL and Billtrust test AI agents that can handle invoice payments through authenticated supplier portals

Visa said it is working with BILL and Billtrust on a pilot designed to use artificial intelligence agents to support invoice payments. The effort focuses on how AI systems can interact with supplier portals, a traditionally manual step in business-to-business payment workflows.

Under the pilot, AI agents are intended to be “securely authenticated” to credentialed supplier portals. In practical terms, that means the agents would log in using supplier-specific access credentials rather than attempting to bypass the authentication controls that portals require.

The companies are positioning the test as a way to make invoice payment flows more efficient while keeping the portal access path controlled through authentication. Visa, BILL and Billtrust did not, in the posted account, specify which supplier onboarding methods are in scope or what portion of the payment process the AI agents would execute end-to-end.

BILL and Billtrust are known for tools used by businesses that manage accounts payable, invoice processing, and payment operations. In invoice payment systems, the handoff from a buyer’s accounts-payable process to a supplier’s portal can be a friction point because it requires secure access and correct handling of supplier-specific payment instructions.

Visa’s involvement places the pilot within a broader push to apply automation and AI to payments operations, not just consumer transactions. If AI can be authenticated into partner portals reliably, it could reduce repetitive steps such as locating invoices, initiating payment instructions, and confirming that the correct portal actions were performed.

Still, the post did not disclose performance targets for the pilot, such as reduced processing time, error-rate changes, or measured impacts on buyer or supplier costs. It also did not provide details on geographic rollout, the number of participating businesses, or whether the test covers specific payment rails or payment types.

For the time being, the safest takeaway is that the pilot is about credentialed access. That matters because supplier portals represent a controlled environment where buyers and their systems must prove authorization before executing any payment-related actions.

What to watch next is whether the companies publish results after the pilot concludes, including how authentication is implemented for AI agents at scale and what boundaries are placed around what the agents can do without human approval.