Visa CMO Frank Cooper III Outlines AI-Driven Future of Commerce at POSSIBLE 2025

In an era where decades-old financial institutions face the challenge of staying relevant amid rapid technological change, Visa’s Chief Marketing Officer Frank Cooper III believes the company’s 60-plus year legacy is actually its strength in navigating the digital frontier.

“Whenever you hear about a company that’s been around for 20, 30, in our case 60-plus years, you often think about ‘that’s a legacy brand,'” Cooper told Judy Shaw at the NYSE Speakers’ Corner at POSSIBLE 2025. “But at the core of Visa, and this has been true from the very beginning in 1958 when [founder] Dee Hock first said this plastic piece of card is an access device to anything of value… that’s been in our DNA of constantly being on the leading edge.”

According to Cooper, Visa’s fundamental mission hasn’t changed: “Increase access, remove friction, and then make sure that there’s a secure reliable trusted network that actually allows all that to happen.”

What has evolved dramatically is how artificial intelligence is reshaping the marketing landscape. Cooper believes marketing will be the business function most profoundly transformed by AI.

“Marketing’s goal is simple: marketing’s goal is to drive profitable growth for the firm by changing people’s perceptions and behaviors,” Cooper explained. “AI is going to play a really significant role in that.”

The technology is already revolutionizing how companies understand and segment their customers. “We used to do it demographically by age, gender, income, and geographic location, and that’s less and less of a good proxy for how people think and behave,” Cooper noted. “AI can see you in different groups. They can see you as a sneakerhead, they can see you as a video gamer, they can see you as a fashionista.”

This capability extends beyond just understanding consumers to content development, distribution, optimization, and measuring marketing impact. “It’s changing rapidly and it’s here right now,” Cooper emphasized.

Perhaps most significantly, Cooper highlighted how AI is already influencing purchasing decisions, often without consumers realizing it. “It’s in the algorithm of every social media platform that’s successful today. AI is at work right there, guiding people right now whether they know it or not.”

Cooper predicts an emerging “co-intelligence” where humans and AI agents collaborate, with AI eventually making autonomous purchase decisions. “It’s going to change what we buy, how we buy, and who buys for us,” he said, urging people to become “active participants in shaping that future” rather than “passive recipients.”

Beyond technological shifts, Cooper identified a fundamental change in how people conceptualize money and financial services. “People thought about all sorts of things in culture and how it shapes who we are, and they kind of put money and financial services in this other bucket of pure rationality,” he explained.

The reality, Cooper argues, is that “culture drives commerce,” and financial behaviors are deeply embedded in broader cultural contexts. “How people earn their money, how they spend it, how they invest it, how they give it is part of a broader cultural context, and that awareness changes everything.”

This cultural dimension of finance has moved from niche online discussions to mainstream conversation, particularly among younger generations. “It’s top of mind particularly as you get down to Gen Z consumers,” Cooper noted.

As Visa navigates this evolving landscape, Cooper’s insights suggest the company sees its role not just as facilitating transactions but as participating in the cultural shifts reshaping how people interact with money in an AI-driven future.

Source: New York Stock Exchange YouTube Channel