Cleverbridge and Visa Complete France’s First Live Passkey-Authenticated Agentic Payment

Cleverbridge, Visa, and Revolut have successfully executed France’s first live agentic payment using Passkey authentication. This milestone demonstrates how AI agents can autonomously navigate checkouts while meeting strict European Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) standards, signaling a shift from human-led e-commerce to secure, machine-driven transactions that maintain bank-level oversight and consumer protection.

What was announced

Cleverbridge has announced the completion of France’s first Passkey-authenticated agentic payment in a live checkout environment. This transaction was conducted as part of a pilot program involving Visa and Revolut. During the test, a Visa-developed agent named "My Agent" initiated a purchase, which Cleverbridge identified as an authorized entity through Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol. The transaction was then authenticated using a Visa Payment Passkey, ensuring compliance with Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements in the European market. Revolut acted as the issuer, authorizing the payment on a live French consumer retail card.

The process utilized Visa Intelligent Commerce, running on the network's existing payment infrastructure. This technology is designed to guarantee purchase intent, which serves a dual purpose: protecting consumers from errors made by AI agents and shielding merchants from chargeback requests initiated by AI. This live market transaction follows an announcement in July where Cleverbridge became one of the first merchants to adopt Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol and Agentic Directory. The company is currently integrating support for approved AI agents directly into its commerce environment, rather than treating it as a separate project for each client. Cleverbridge is currently working with Visa through the Agentic Ready programme to refine how verified agents are recognized and governed in real-world commerce scenarios.

"Agents need more control than an ordinary purchase, not less, and it has to work in a live market rather than a lab. Here the merchant knew which agent it was dealing with and the customer's bank stayed in charge of the payment. That is what has to be true before agentic commerce can carry real volume, and helping define it is why we are in this programme.”

Richard Stevenson, CEO of Cleverbridge.

The companies involved

Cleverbridge is a managed global commerce platform specifically designed for enterprise software and technology companies. Founded in 2005, the firm provides the infrastructure and services necessary for clients to sell, renew, and grow across diverse go-to-market models. It currently processes more than $1 billion in annual volume across more than 240 markets, serving high-profile clients such as Autodesk, SUSE, Tenable, Veeam, and Shure. The platform takes responsibility for the entire commerce operation, including payments, billing, tax, compliance, and demand generation.

Visa is a global leader in digital payments, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, and financial institutions across more than 200 countries and territories. Revolut, a major player in the fintech sector, has expanded from a travel-focused card to a global financial "super-app" with millions of users. Both companies have been frequent subjects of FF News coverage, with Visa appearing in over 700 reports and Revolut in more than 240, reflecting their central roles in the evolution of digital banking and payment infrastructure.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has tracked the intersection of AI and financial services closely. Recently, we covered how CMC Markets Launches ChatGPT Integration for UK CFD Traders to Simplify Market Data Access, highlighting the growing role of LLMs in retail finance. In the payments space, Revolut Launches Facial Recognition Payments and 0% Merchant Fees in UK High Street Pilot showed the bank's appetite for biometric authentication. Additionally, Visa's infrastructure expansion was noted when UPT Partners with Visa to Launch Virtual IBANs for Corporate Cross-Border Payments. We also reported on the broader infrastructure layer when dtcpay Secures $25M Series A to Scale Global Stablecoin Payment Infrastructure, emphasizing the move toward more automated, global payment rails.

What this means

The transition from human-to-machine commerce to machine-to-machine commerce represents a fundamental shift in the payments landscape. By utilizing Passkeys to satisfy Strong Customer Authentication, this pilot addresses the primary regulatory hurdle for autonomous agents in Europe. The industry must now consider the implications of "agentic mistakes" and the potential for AI-led chargeback requests, which could disrupt traditional dispute resolution models. While this pilot proves technical feasibility, the market remains under pressure to establish standardized protocols for agent recognition. The success of such initiatives will likely depend on whether other major issuers and networks adopt similar "Trusted Agent" frameworks to govern non-human purchase intent.