Why This Matters to Distributors: The pilot could eliminate a manual step between a customer approving an invoice and a distributor receiving payment. It allows authorized artificial intelligence agents to submit payments through supplier portals while preserving the seller’s payment rules and the records needed to match payments to invoices.
Visa, BILL, and Billtrust have launched a live pilot that allows artificial intelligence agents to pay approved customer invoices through supplier portals, potentially reducing manual payment processing for distributors using Billtrust.
Announced Oct. 20, the project addresses a gap in business-to-business payment automation: Even after a customer approves an invoice, an employee may still need to log into the supplier’s website and enter payment information.
The pilot lets an authorized AI agent complete that step. Participating buyers using BILL and suppliers using Billtrust are already processing transactions, the companies said, although they did not identify participants or disclose payment volume.
For distributors, the potential benefit is a shorter path from customer approval to payment. A customer’s software could submit an approved payment without waiting for an employee to enter it manually. The distributor would retain its payment acceptance policies and receive the information needed to apply the payment to the appropriate invoice.
The agents do not decide which bills to pay. They execute eligible payments that buyers have already approved.
Removing A Manual Payment Step
Supplier portals commonly use security measures to block unauthorized automated activity. Those protections can also prevent a customer’s authorized software from submitting a payment, leaving an employee to finish the transaction.
The pilot uses Visa’s technology to help Billtrust distinguish an authorized payment agent from an unwanted bot. Billtrust can then grant the agent access to complete the payment without requiring the buyer to share a supplier-portal login.
“This pilot applies agentic commerce to a real B2B-payment problem,” said Mark Nelsen, Visa’s senior vice president and head of product for commercial and money movement solutions.
The process begins with the buyer’s approved payment instructions. BILL’s agent uses protected payment credentials to initiate a card payment, while Billtrust authenticates the agent and enables it to complete the transaction through the supplier’s portal.
According to the companies, that authentication can satisfy security protections traditionally provided by CAPTCHA challenges and other bot-blocking tools.
For distributors’ credit and collections departments, the approach could reduce delays associated with customers manually submitting approved payments. The companies have not released results showing how much time the pilot has saved or whether suppliers are collecting payments sooner.
Preserving Supplier Control
The pilot is designed to operate within suppliers’ existing payment acceptance policies. It also provides visibility into payment authorization and completion and retains information needed to match payments to invoices.
For a distributor, those records are essential to identifying the customer, applying the payment correctly and resolving discrepancies. Automating submission would address only part of that process; suppliers would still need to handle exceptions and maintain accurate customer accounts.
The project also offers a limited test of how distributors might transact with customers’ AI agents. Here, the agent has a specific assignment: Complete an approved payment under established rules. It does not negotiate payment terms or make purchasing decisions.
The announcement did not specify when the service might become available to Billtrust customers. It also did not disclose implementation costs, transaction fees or how payment exceptions would be handled.
Visa, BILL, and Billtrust said they will continue exploring additional uses for AI agents in payments as the pilot progresses. For distributors, the immediate question is whether the technology can turn an approved customer invoice into a completed payment with less manual work.
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