Oliver Smith
Head of Content, Money20/20 Europe
There was a shift in the conversation around AI at Money20/20 Europe this year. We’ve moved beyond asking what AI could do, towards the question: what are we prepared to let it do?
Instead of AI simply helping someone make a payment, an AI agent can decide when a payment should happen, work out the best way, and take action on the user’s behalf. That could mean choosing between payment rails, managing risk, or even making a purchase unassisted.
Three things are combining to make this possible
Firstly, AI is getting much better at making decisions rather than simply generating predictions or recommendations. That opens the possibility of payment systems that respond dynamically rather than following fixed rules.
Secondly, infrastructure is catching up. Tokenised money, real-time payments and increasingly interoperable payment rails are creating the foundations for money to move in faster, more flexible ways.
We saw a good example this year with Europe’s first production-ready agentic payments flow. What stood out wasn’t the technology, but different parts of the payment chain working together to make autonomous payments possible.
Agentic payments could change not just how money moves,
but how financial services themselves are designed.
Banks, fintechs and platforms are building more modular tech stacks
Thirdly, financial services are being restructured. Data, risk, fraud and compliance are becoming increasingly connected. Agents could ultimately become the tissue that brings these pieces together.
The opportunity isn’t just to automate existing processes. An AI agent could choose the most efficient payment route based on cost, speed and availability. It could spot unusual behaviour before a transaction is complete, or select the best option for a customer without requiring them to navigate a series of choices.
In this future, payments become almost invisible. But there is a catch: the more autonomy we give these systems, the more trust matters.
AI payments raise higher stakes
That makes questions around identity, fraud, security and regulation far more important. The challenge isn’t teaching an agent how to make a payment. It’s deciding what it is allowed to do, who is accountable when something goes wrong and how we make the system trustworthy.
That is the most fascinating part of this conversation.
Agentic payments could change not just how money moves, but how financial services themselves are designed. At Money20/20 Europe, it felt like we were starting to move from talking about that future to building it.
