Cleverbridge, a commerce platform for software companies, announced France’s first passkey-authenticated agentic payment on September 24, 2026. The Chicago and Cologne-based firm completed it in a live checkout. The pilot ran with Visa and Revolut. Visa’s test agent started the Cleverbridge agentic payment. A Visa Payment Passkey authenticated it, and Revolut authorized it on a French consumer card.

The news is not quite new. Revolut and Visa first disclosed the transaction on September 8, and the Cleverbridge release is the merchant’s account of it. It was a single payment in a pilot. Still, the Cleverbridge agentic payment shows how AI agents can buy within Europe’s Strong Customer Authentication rules. Those rules make card payments harder to automate than in the US.

How the Cleverbridge Agentic Payment Worked

Four parties each did one job. Visa’s test agent, called My Agent, started the purchase. Cleverbridge’s checkout recognized it as an approved agent through Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol and let it complete the order. A Visa Payment Passkey authenticated the transaction, which is how it met Strong Customer Authentication. Revolut, as card issuer, authorized the payment on a French retail card.

The flow ran on Visa’s existing card infrastructure, and the card payment itself was ordinary. What changed was an automated agent in the buyer’s seat, with every other party aware of it.

Cleverbridge has worked toward this since the summer. On July 2, it said it was among the first merchants to enable Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol and Agentic Directory. It then ran agent-initiated transactions in controlled environments. The Cleverbridge agentic payment in France moved that work onto a live consumer card about two months later.

Why Passkeys Made It Possible

Most agentic commerce demos come from the US. There, a merchant can often charge a stored card without asking the customer to authenticate again. Europe is different. Under PSD2, most online card payments need Strong Customer Authentication, meaning the cardholder proves identity with two factors. An AI agent cannot do that alone unless the issuer accepts some form of delegated authority.

Passkeys offer one answer, and the Cleverbridge agentic payment tested it. The customer authenticates with a device-bound credential, the issuer sees a strong signal, and the agent does the rest. In its July announcement, Visa said its payment passkeys link the cardholder’s authorization to an explicit instruction and support SCA compliance.

Disputes are where the money is. Merchants fear a wave of chargebacks from customers who say the AI bought something they did not want. In the Cleverbridge agentic payment, a verified agent plus a passkey gave the merchant evidence. It showed a known agent acted and the real cardholder approved. Cleverbridge CEO Richard Stevenson said agents “need more control than an ordinary purchase, not less.”

Why Cleverbridge Is a Sensible Place to Test This

Cleverbridge runs managed commerce for software companies, handling payments, billing, tax and compliance for clients such as Autodesk, SUSE, Tenable and Veeam. It processes more than $1 billion a year across more than 240 markets. It runs the checkout and carries much of the payment risk. So it has a direct interest in knowing whether an agent at the checkout is legitimate.

Software is also a natural early category for agentic buying. Renewals, seat upgrades and add-on licenses are repetitive, rules-based purchases that a business might hand to an agent with a budget. Cleverbridge is building agent support into the commerce environment it operates. That way, each software client does not need its own project. That is the right design, because merchants will not want to integrate a dozen agent protocols one by one.

Others are building the same trust layer on different rails. On September 22, GoCardless processed the UK’s first agentic account-to-account payment. In April, Stripe updated its Link wallet so AI agents can pay with it.

What the Cleverbridge Agentic Payment Does Not Prove

This was Visa’s own test agent, not a consumer’s choice of assistant, and the release describes one live transaction. It proves the plumbing works end to end in France with a real issuer. It does not show whether consumers want this, or how often passkey prompts will interrupt an agent meant to act alone.

That second point matters most. Suppose the customer must approve every agent purchase with a passkey. Then the agent is closer to a very good shopping assistant than an autonomous buyer. If issuers start accepting standing mandates for trusted agents within set limits, the model changes.

Revolut’s role is also less unusual than it looks. In July, Visa named it among 30 European issuers in the next phase of its agentic commerce work. Barclays, BBVA, ING and NatWest were on the same list. So the France first is about the passkey in a live French checkout. It does not make Revolut the only willing issuer. Rival networks are moving too: The Paypers reports that Santander and Mastercard completed an agentic payment in Europe in March.

What to Watch

As of September 27, neither Cleverbridge nor Visa had announced a second Cleverbridge agentic payment by a third-party agent. Visa had also named no new European issuers since the July list.

The Cleverbridge agentic payment is a useful proof point for Europe specifically, because SCA was always going to be the hard part. The next test is volume. Watch for the first Cleverbridge agentic payment made by an assistant a consumer chose, rather than Visa’s test agent. Also watch for issuers accepting standing limits for trusted agents, which would reduce how often a passkey prompt interrupts the purchase.

For more on Revolut, see how Revolut Pay with Smile tested face payments in London and how Revolut added Colombia to its banking licenses.

FintechBits covers payments, banking and fintech developments for readers in the US and UK. This article is for information only and is not financial advice. Views expressed are those of the FintechBits editorial team.