Visa · February 2025 – July 2026
Agentic commerce at Visa
Lead researcher for Visa's Consumer Growth pillar.
Research questions
As the only researcher formally staffed to the Consumer Growth portfolio, I was tasked with exploring consumer needs, sentiment, and reactions to agentic commerce in support of Visa Intelligent Commerce (VIC) and Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP). Research covered a range of topics including, but not limited to:
- Overall interest in agentic commerce
- How consumers prefer to be recognized when shopping with agents
- What people made of in-market experiences, captured in a diary study
- Initial reactions to in-car purchases
- Issuer app UX for agentic transactions
- Expert opinions and predictions on multiple topics
Program oversight
Starting with discovery research in 2025 and dedicated budget for FY26 I was able to shepherd the delivery of over a dozen studies, big and small. Everything beyond what I could personally run came from borrowing bandwidth from colleagues, and from agencies where a study needed reach. In this role I was responsible for:
- Prioritization — intake from product and design, and deciding what made the cut, and formalizing those decisions through our quarterly planning process
- Resourcing — finding and briefing researchers from other teams for temporary support
- Budget ownership — spend tracked against a quarterly envelope, SOWs, forecasting with finance each quarter, and producing a thorough budget proposal for FY27
- Program oversight — leading some projects directly, overseeing others, handing the rest off
Selected case studies
Qualitative · 10 moderated interviews, 20 unmoderated tests
Exploring agentic commerce
Two preliminary rounds, testing a brand new concept
Two rounds of consumer research on Visa's first agentic commerce concepts.
Qualitative · 10 co-moderated 90-minute expert interviews
Expert outlooks
Ten interviews with industry participants
Ten interviews with practitioners across the agentic ecosystem. Included a review of the extant protocols, a read on where things were heading, and a light round of concept testing on an early stage product.
Quantitative · 15-minute survey, n=4,000
Gauging interest in four markets
Measuring consumer interest against real designs
A four-market survey of 4,000 consumers, measuring interest against designs built to Visa's latest specifications rather than the category in general, focused on four key moments where Visa APIs played a role.