As Bangladesh moves beyond the early stages of digital payment adoption, the next challenge is to build a trusted, interoperable and intelligent ecosystem that connects consumers, businesses and the wider economy. Visa Regional President, Asia Pacific, Stephen Karpin, outlines how technology, cybersecurity, AI and financial inclusion could shape that transition.
Bangladesh’s digital payments story is entering a more consequential phase. Over the past decade, digital financial services have expanded rapidly, particularly in major urban centres such as Dhaka and Chattogram. But the next stage of growth will require more than bringing additional consumers online. It will require extending digital payments beyond established centres, building confidence among first-time users, strengthening interoperability and ensuring that the benefits of digital finance reach underserved communities.
For Stephen Karpin, Regional President, Asia Pacific, Visa, this transition represents a shift from digital adoption to digital utility where cards, wallets, accounts and merchant platforms operate seamlessly rather than as isolated parts of the ecosystem.
Recent initiatives illustrate the direction of travel. The Visa and Sonali Bank PLC Farmers Card, announced in April 2026 and benefiting more than 20,000 farmers, reflects the potential of digital payments to extend financial participation beyond traditional urban and formal channels. Stephen sees such efforts as important building blocks for a broader digital economy.
Visa’s priorities in Bangladesh centre on three foundations: building consumer confidence through secure-by-design products, improving digital and financial literacy among consumers and merchants, and strengthening interoperability across banks, mobile financial services, merchants and payment networks. The objective is not simply to increase transaction volumes, but to establish a sustainable ecosystem capable of supporting wider economic participation.
That emphasis on trust becomes particularly important as the threat landscape evolves. Stephen argues that cybersecurity is no longer a question of responding to a static level of fraud; fraud itself is becoming faster and more sophisticated, with AI, social engineering and targeted digital scams changing the nature of risk.
Visa has invested more than $13 billion in technology and infrastructure over the past five years to strengthen cybersecurity, reduce fraud and improve resilience across its global payments ecosystem. Stephen also points to the company’s long-standing use of AI across the payment lifecycle, while noting that the same technology is reshaping the threat landscape. Visa’s Vulnerability Agentic Harness, or VVAH, is designed to accelerate vulnerability remediation and has been open-sourced as a digital public good to help strengthen cyber resilience across the wider ecosystem.
AI, however, is not only a defensive technology. Stephen sees its greater opportunity in transforming the way payments are experienced. One emerging frontier is agentic commerce, in which AI agents can help consumers discover, compare and eventually purchase products on their behalf. Visa’s Intelligent Commerce initiative is intended to enable such transactions while preserving authentication, security and consumer control.
For merchants, Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol includes tools such as Agent Score, Agentic Directory and Intelligent Commerce Connect, while its Large Transaction Model is designed to use transaction intelligence to strengthen fraud detection, authorisation decisions and false-decline management. Together, these developments point towards a payments environment where AI increasingly becomes part of the transaction journey rather than simply an underlying technology.
The same principle of balancing security with simplicity applies to authentication. Visa Payment Passkey, recently launched in Bangladesh, uses global FIDO standards to move beyond traditional OTP-based authentication. For Stephen, authentication should increasingly operate quietly in the background, reducing friction while strengthening consumer confidence.
Yet technology alone cannot deliver inclusive growth. SMEs, which Stephen describes as the backbone of a growth economy, need affordable and practical digital tools that can improve cash flow, attract customers and create financial histories that support future financing. Visa Accept, which can turn a micro-merchant’s smartphone into a payment acceptance device without additional infrastructure, is expected to launch in Bangladesh soon.
Cross-border connectivity will be another critical dimension. As Bangladesh expands its participation in global trade, remittances, e-commerce and international travel, payments will need to become faster, safer and more transparent. Technologies including tokenisation, real-time payment capabilities and Visa Direct Account can help reduce friction across remittances, business payments and person-to-person transfers.
Ultimately, Stephen sees Bangladesh as a key market within Visa’s Asia Pacific and global strategy not simply because of its growth potential, but because of its opportunity to demonstrate how digital payments can support inclusive economic development. With a presence spanning more than 220 countries and territories, Visa brings global scale, but Stephen stresses that its approach in Bangladesh remains rooted in local needs and partnerships.
The future, he suggests, will make the distinctions between cards, wallets, accounts and other payment credentials increasingly invisible to consumers. What will matter is whether a payment is trusted, instant, secure, personalised and capable of working across physical, digital and cross-border environments.
As AI begins influencing not only how transactions are processed but also how consumers discover and purchase products, businesses will increasingly need to design for both human and AI-assisted journeys. For Bangladesh, the opportunity is therefore broader than becoming a less-cash economy. It is to build a connected, secure and intelligent payments ecosystem in which innovation translates into greater participation, stronger businesses and deeper integration with the global economy.
