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Decoding the Future of Commerce
How Visa uses AI-powered qualitative research to decode attitudes toward agentic commerce
60
in-depth interviews
2
audiences: B2C & B2B
Days
not months
Summary of Impact
Replaced months-long research cycles with days.
Mapped where consumers draw the line on trusting AI to spend their money.
Identified what merchants actually fear — and where they see opportunity.
Gave VCA a data-backed foundation for advising clients across the payments ecosystem on agentic commerce readiness.
The Context
Visa Consulting & Analytics — the strategic advisory arm of Visa — helps clients across the payments ecosystem make smarter, data-driven decisions. They work on cutting-edge topics at the intersection of payments, commerce, and emerging technology.
The question no one had data on
Agentic commerce was no longer theoretical. Big players were already building AI-driven shopping experiences. But the research hadn't caught up. The questions that mattered most — how people would want to use it, what they'd embrace, what they'd resist — were still unanswered.
The first was about consumers. Would people actually trust an AI agent to spend their money? What would make them feel safe? What would make them walk away?
The second was about merchants. Would online retailers see AI agents as an opportunity — or a threat? Would they change their platforms to accommodate them, or resist?
We wanted to understand agentic commerce from both sides of the transaction — the consumer and the merchant. This was uncharted territory — no one had real data on that. The complexity of the topic meant we needed real, in-depth qualitative conversations, not just survey data.
60 conversations in days
Visa partnered with Reason8 to run the study using AI-moderated in-depth interviews.
Forty interviews went to consumers across different demographics — exploring trust, expectations, payment preferences, and concerns about handing purchase decisions to an AI. Twenty went to e-commerce decision-makers — exploring business impact, platform readiness, and the fear of losing direct customer relationships.
Reason8 ran each conversation the way a human moderator would: probing, clarifying, following up based on what each person actually said. The platform handled everything from screening to the interviews themselves.
The VCA team stayed involved throughout. They could test the interview, give feedback on specific questions, and see changes reflected immediately.
The AI moderator handled complex, nuanced topics — like payment security preferences and trust in autonomous transactions — with a level of depth we didn't expect.
From interviews to strategy
Reason8 delivered an executive presentation with the key strategic insights, separate deep-dives for the consumer and merchant perspectives, all 60 full transcripts, and raw data in editable format.
For VCA, this was the foundation for how they'd advise clients across the payments ecosystem on preparing for agentic commerce.
This changed how we think about research in advisory work. When data is days away instead of months, you can ask different questions — and give clients better answers. We now have a data-backed understanding of where consumers draw the line on trust, what merchants actually worry about, and where the real opportunities lie.
What came next
The VCA team saw something in the results they weren't used to seeing: real consumer and merchant data, collected in days, at a depth that usually takes months to get — if it's possible to get at all.
In advisory work, that kind of first-hand insight is often the missing piece. The team knows what clients need to hear, but getting the data to back it up means long timelines, expensive fieldwork, and trade-offs on scope.
This study changed the math. Visa decided to make the collaboration ongoing — so that the next time a client question comes up, the data is days away, not months.
Ready to compress your research timeline?
See how Reason8 can deliver months of qualitative insight in days — without sacrificing depth.