According to Cointelegraph, global payment giant Visa has announced a new $100 million generative AI initiative to invest in companies focused on developing generative AI technologies and applications related to commerce and payments. The investment will be curated by Visa's global corporate investment arm, Visa Ventures, which has been working on supporting innovation in payments and commerce since 2007.
Generative AI is a type of AI technology that can produce various types of content, including text, imagery, audio, and synthetic data. Major AI chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard show the capabilities of generative AI to comprehend and produce human-like writing. Visa's chief product and strategy officer Jack Forestell believes that generative AI has a promising future in the financial world.
Visa has a history of applying AI technology in its ecosystem. The company claims to be one of the first firms in the world to pioneer AI use in payments back in 1993, deploying AI-based technology for risk and fraud management. In 2022, Visa's real-time payment fraud monitoring solution, Visa Advanced Authorization, reportedly helped prevent an estimated $27 billion in fraud. In 2021, Visa introduced VisaNet +AI, a suite of AI-based services focused on fixing delays and confusion with managing account balances and other issues of daily settlement for financial institutions. The suite includes tools such as Smarter Stand-In Processing and Smarter Posting, which aim to improve payment experiences and reduce confusion from posting delays.