--- title: Waller, Payments in the Age of AI Agents description: "Waller's speech is entirely about payments technology: AI in fraud detection and cybersecurity, cross-border payment routing, and the emergence of agentic…" source: Helious canonical: "https://helious.io/news/94472afe60768e031ec503141e30254d/waller-payments-in-the-age-of-ai-agents" --- FED SPEAK 29 Sept 2026, 19:00 UTC # Waller, Payments in the Age of AI Agents ## SPEECH DIGEST NEUTRAL high confidence · 12.1k characters read Waller's speech is entirely about payments technology: AI in fraud detection and cybersecurity, cross-border payment routing, and the emergence of agentic commerce. There is no monetary policy content, no rate guidance, and no discussion of the policy stance. For the rates desk this is a non-event: nothing here bears on the front end or the curve. **What’s new: **Nothing material for rates. This is a payments-and-innovation speech from a Governor in his technology-portfolio capacity, not a policy signal. The only genuinely new items are descriptive: a Fed roundtable Waller hosted on agentic commerce, the two-model framing (agent-assisted vs agent-delegated), and the open questions around authentication, liability and standards. None of it settles anything about the funds rate. ### KEY FINDINGS - The speech contains no monetary policy signal whatsoever. Waller discusses AI, cross-border payments, and agentic commerce with no reference to the policy rate, inflation, or the labor market. There is nothing to reprice the front end; treat this as a zero-delta speech for rates. - Waller hosted a Federal Reserve industry roundtable on agentic commerce, and reports that 'Market participants broadly agree that agentic commerce is in an early phase, but it could significantly reshape commerce and payments if adoption scales.' Signals the Fed is monitoring agentic payments as a potential structural shift in transaction flows, which could eventually affect payment velocity and money demand. - The stated barrier to scaling the agent-delegated model is trust: 'The biggest barrier to scaling agentic commerce, particularly the agent-delegated model, is building sufficient trust among buyers and sellers.' Authentication, liability and fraud recalibration are the named challenges. Adoption is gated by rules and standards, not technology, so any shift in transaction volumes will be slow and policy-mediated. - Card networks are publishing technical specifications for agents to make secure payments on a payer's behalf, and there is an open contest between platform-specific and interoperable standards, and between open and closed agentic systems. The standards outcome will shape which payment networks and platforms capture agentic commerce volumes. - Micropayments from agent activity 'favor payment rails with lower flat fees,' and B2B commerce would require agents to operate across ACH, wire, instant payments and cards. A structural argument favoring real-time, low-flat-fee rails over card interchange if agentic volumes scale. ### FROM THE DOCUMENT Market participants broadly agree that agentic commerce is in an early phase, but it could significantly reshape commerce and payments if adoption scales. The biggest barrier to scaling agentic commerce, particularly the agent-delegated model, is building sufficient trust among buyers and sellers. A key question is whether agentic commerce will migrate toward platform-specific or interoperable standards. At this early stage, it is not clear which model will have the edge in shaping agentic commerce, but whichever gains traction could significantly influence how the market structure evolves. Speech At Sibos 2026, Miami, Florida Thank you for inviting me to speak here today. 1 Last year at Sibos I leaned into the conference theme and discussed how a range of emerging technologies could shape the next frontier in global payments. 2 Consistent with this year's theme, today I want to focus more specifically on the state of artificial intelligence (AI) in payments and raise a few questions about how this technology could change the way payment systems operate. As I have discussed before, within the financial sector, the payments industry has long been at the forefront of using AI to improve operations. 3 There is a rich history of deploying machine learning to combat payments fraud. The industry was also an early adopter of large language models (LLMs) for payment reconciliation and similar tasks. Now it is helping to build foundational infrastructure for AI agents to operate more broadly in the economy. [ Read the full Fed speech at the source →](https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/waller20260928a.htm) Copy link [Follow this live on the Helious desk →](https://helious.io/)