Visa and G42's Inception Announce Strategic Partnership to Accelerate Agentic Commerce in CEMEA Region

Strategic Partnership Integrating Visa Intelligent Commerce

Inception partners with Visa to accelerate agentic commerce adoption

Inception will integrate Visa Intelligent Commerce into agentic commerce solutions enabling secure, autonomous commerce and AI‑driven payment capabilities.

On January 26, 2026, UAE-based AI company Inception (part of the G42 Group) and payment giant Visa announced a strategic partnership to accelerate the adoption of agentic commerce in the Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA) region.

Through this partnership, Inception will integrate Visa Intelligent Commerce into its agentic commerce solutions. The goal is to provide secure and autonomous AI-driven payment capabilities for merchants, card issuers, marketplaces, and ecosystem partners.

Inception CEO Ashish Koshy stated in an interview with TahawulTech.com that "agentic commerce is fundamentally changing how transactions happen. Our collaboration with Visa ensures that AI-powered purchasing experiences are built on a trusted payment foundation."

The Rapidly Growing Agentic Commerce Market

Agentic commerce refers to a new form of digital shopping where AI agents autonomously handle product discovery, comparison, purchasing, and transaction management on behalf of consumers and businesses. According to Visa's official position, this goes beyond mere recommendations to a next-generation commerce model where AI actually completes purchasing actions.

Market change is progressing rapidly. According to Visa's announcement, AI-driven traffic to retail sites has increased by over 4,700% in the past year. Additionally, 47% of U.S. consumers use AI tools for at least one shopping task, such as price comparison or personalized recommendations.

Visa predicts that "by the 2026 holiday season, millions of consumers will complete purchases using AI agents" and is currently working with over 100 partners to build the ecosystem. More than 30 companies are developing in Visa Intelligent Commerce's sandbox, and over 20 agents and agent enablers are pursuing direct integration.

Technical Foundation of Visa Intelligent Commerce

Visa Intelligent Commerce is a platform for AI agents to execute transactions securely and seamlessly. It is built on Visa's infrastructure, which processes over 300 billion transactions annually.

Technical features include tokenization, passkey authentication, agent ID protocols, and privacy protection capabilities. Particularly noteworthy is the Trusted Agent Protocol. This is an open framework developed jointly with Cloudflare that establishes trust relationships between AI agents and merchants using cryptographic technology.

In the Trusted Agent Protocol, each agent obtains a unique cryptographic key after Visa's vetting process. All requests include time-limited signatures to prevent replay attacks. Early partners include major players such as Adyen, Stripe, Shopify, Microsoft, and Coinbase.

Inception's Strengths and CEMEA Region Deployment

G42-backed Inception is an AI company with domain-specific LLMs, multimodal intelligence, and enterprise-grade agent components. It offers product suites for various sectors including finance, healthcare, and energy ((In)Alpha, (In)Health, (In)Energy, etc.).

In this partnership, both companies will jointly develop agent-based commerce capabilities. They plan to support organizations in exploring and adopting agent-driven shopping and payment experiences through pilot programs, client demonstrations, and ecosystem readiness support.

Godfrey Sullivan, Head of Products & Solutions at Visa CEMEA, stated: "AI agents are ushering in a new era of digital commerce, and trust is the core requirement for scaling these experiences. By combining Inception's advanced AI capabilities with Visa Intelligent Commerce, we are providing regional businesses with a practical way to confidently explore this future."

Impact on E-commerce Businesses and Applications

For businesses in the CEMEA region, this partnership signals the arrival of a preparation period for the full-scale launch of agentic commerce in 2026. Specific responses to consider include:

First, payment infrastructure verification is necessary. We recommend confirming with your payment processor whether they can handle Visa Intelligent Commerce-compatible transactions. Major providers like Adyen and Stripe already support the Trusted Agent Protocol.

Next, consider website agent-readiness. You need to assess whether AI agents can crawl your site, retrieve product information, and complete purchases. Structured data preparation and API provision should also be considered.

Pilot programs are scheduled to begin in early 2026 in Asia Pacific and Europe. In the Middle East, Visa is working with Aldar to enable AI agent payments for real estate service fees.

Summary

The Visa-Inception partnership represents an important milestone indicating that agentic commerce is entering the implementation phase on a global scale. With the participation of a G42 subsidiary, a major Middle Eastern technology company, ecosystem formation in the CEMEA region is expected to accelerate.

As Visa's declaration that 2025 will be "the last year consumers shop alone" becomes increasingly realistic, e-commerce businesses are at a stage where they should begin preparing to welcome AI agents as customers. Going forward, progress of pilot programs and regulatory developments in each region will be key points to watch.