Governor Waller outlines AI agenda for payments industry
Payment providers, merchants and consumers are urged to prepare for AI-driven changes in cross-border and e-commerce payments, effective immediately.
Governor Waller's remarks did not introduce a formal rule but announced a strategic agenda for artificial intelligence in payments that will guide federal and industry actions affecting payment service providers, merchants and consumers.
He highlighted how large language models can improve sanctions screening and anti-money-laundering systems in cross-border flows, noting research that shows a reduction in false-positive alerts and a freeing of resources for higher-risk cases.
Waller acknowledged the dual nature of AI for cybersecurity, citing weekly model releases that raise attack sophistication while also emphasizing AI-enabled threat detection and software hardening as defensive tools, and warning that the attack surface for payment operators remains large.
The governor turned to "agentic commerce," describing two models: agent-assisted, where a buyer uses an AI agent for search but retains payment control, and agent-delegated, where an AI agent can shop and pay autonomously within preset guardrails. He identified authentication, liability and fraud as the chief trust challenges for the delegated model.
He noted that tech firms, e-commerce platforms and card networks are already drafting technical specifications for registering agents, logging payer approvals and enabling secure payments, and that the industry is debating open versus closed, interoperable versus platform-specific standards for the emerging ecosystem.
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