On September 29, Fed Governor Christopher Waller discussed AI in payments, focusing on cross-border payments and “agentic commerce,” in which AI agents make e-commerce purchases. In the cross-border context, Waller said large language models can greatly improve the accuracy of sanctions screening and anti-money laundering systems. He cited Fed staff research showing they can significantly reduce false-positive alerts, but said that, given the speed of modern payment systems, he expects them to supplement, not replace, traditional anomaly detection. He called concerns about AI-enabled cyberattacks “well founded” but said AI also aids defense, adding that an “asymmetry” (i.e., attackers need only one weakness, while operators must defend a broad attack surface) requires the industry to move deliberately in using AI to strengthen payment system safety. Waller said market participants broadly agree that agentic commerce, though at an early stage, could significantly reshape commerce and payments if adoption scales.

He described two models: agent-assisted, in which a buyer uses an agent mainly for product search but keeps control, and agent-delegated, in which the agent shops and pays autonomously within guardrails the buyer may set. Business-to-business purchases, he said, may be especially well suited to agents because they often follow set rules, though higher transaction values increase exposure from errors. Calling trust the biggest barrier to scaling, particularly for the delegated model, Waller said authentication would shift from verifying the buyer to proving an agent’s authority to pay on the buyer’s behalf. He also pointed to liability for an agent’s wrong purchase, suggesting that technical standards clarifying what a buyer intended and how the agent acted could reduce ambiguities in transaction disputes. Waller added that fraud systems built around human behavior will need recalibrating. Card networks, he noted, are publishing specifications for registering agents and logging cardholder approvals, though he said it remains a key question whether standards will be platform-specific or interoperable. He said agentic transactions could materially change the frequency and timing of payments and called for a proactive approach that balances innovation with the safety, integrity and stability that support trust in payments.