How Visa helps Ulta Beauty turn personalized AI shopping into confident checkout

Beauty discovery doesn’t move in a straight line anymore, and Ulta Beauty knows it. As a leading omnichannel beauty retailer, Ulta Beauty is integrated with Visa Acceptance Solutions to power card present and card-not-present transactions using acceptance, tokenization, and risk solutions.

Ulta Beauty is expanding its existing integration into AI-assisted and agent-initiated checkout without breaking their existing trusted payment experience.

The result: redefining the path from inspiration to purchase, where personalized recommendations can live beside secure, low-friction checkout through AI-connected capabilities to meet guests where they’re at. This includes both Ulta Beauty-owned digital experiences and the external AI platforms where more shoppers are beginning their search.

For Ulta Beauty guests, that means less second-guessing and friction with faster ways to find products that match their skin, shade, and routine. With fewer steps between “this looks perfect” and “it’s on the way,” shoppers have the confidence that checkout and post-purchase still work the way they always have.

How discovery is becoming agentic

As AI reshapes how guests browse, get recommendations, and ultimately purchase, Ulta Beauty needed a way to support agent-initiated checkout and still deliver the effortless checkout guests expect, even when they don’t start on Ulta’s website. This meant:

• Pairing AI-driven discovery and trusted, low-friction checkout within their site and app
• Extending their payment ecosystem into new discovery moments through agentic shopping experiences
• Keeping checkout convenient

And it doesn’t stop at authorization. The experience needed end-to-end omnichannel continuity with Ulta Beauty’s existing payment systems, such as refunds and returns.

Making agent-initiated checkout feel effortless

Ulta Beauty leverages Visa Acceptance Solutions across acceptance and fraud prevention to complete transactions. Using the same integration, AI-assisted and agent-initiated checkout is a natural extension of Ulta Beauty’s omnichannel experience, enabling on-site and off-site agentic commerce for the company’s core payment stack.

In this model, Ulta Beauty’s existing payment flow uses Google Pay credentials and generates tokens to keep downstream processes like refunds and returns working smoothly without the original card details.

With Visa’s Acceptance Platform, Ulta Beauty can enable:   

• In-agent checkout within Google experiences (no redirect required)
• AI-enhanced journeys on Ulta Beauty channels with optimized, convenient checkout
• Consistency with Ulta Beauty’s existing payment and omnichannel infrastructure, including returns  
• More confidence for shoppers trying a new agentic channel backed by familiar protections

It’s a faster path to market and flexibility for emerging agentic commerce channels that keeps the checkout experience consistent, protected, and unmistakably Ulta Beauty.

How AI-initiated payments work for Ulta

A beauty lover searches for and discovers new products in Gemini and receives personalized recommendations tailored to their needs. When they’re ready, they select “Buy with Google Pay” without leaving the AI experience. Google Pay credentials then initiates the transaction, which routes into Ulta Beauty’s existing payment flow.

Ulta Beauty can decrypt and authorize the payment, apply fraud/risk decisioning, and generate a token to support downstream processes—enabling customer service, refunds, and returns without requiring the original card details. For the beauty lover, it’s a smoother, more confident experience without extra forms, logins, or guesswork.

Making it easier for guests to click “add to bag”

Ulta Beauty’s connection to the Visa Acceptance Platform helps activate agentic commerce faster and ensures that complex omnichannel moments are seamless for guests, like ‘buy via an AI agent, return in store.’

The platform’s card-agnostic capabilities drive an innovative, cohesive experience across Ulta Beauty-owned channels and external AI platforms, including:

• Stronger discovery-to-purchase conversions on Ulta channels with checkout that stays consistent and optimized
• Low-friction purchases on AI platforms that align with standards Ulta Beauty guests expect, even for refunds
• Fewer steps, fewer form fills, and a more seamless path from recommendation to purchase so shoppers can check out in seconds, not minutes.
• Omnichannel-ready operations, as tokenization supports end-to-end commerce needs

With faster discovery, more confidence in what to buy, and fewer checkout hurdles, Ulta guests can easily order Ulta Beauty products without leaving Google. The Visa Acceptance Platform handles the transaction behind the scenes, backed by continuity if something needs to be exchanged or returned. Visa’s proven, production-ready payments foundation for agentic commerce channels represents the first step toward supporting trust and scalability as shoppers incorporate agents into their buying routines.    

Let’s talk payments

We helped Ulta Beauty connect the full omnichannel experience—from agentic discovery to satisfied customer. 

Find out more about the Visa Acceptance Platform and how we keep you ahead, always. 

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