Episode Details

IMF's Sonja Davidovic explains agentic AI, the architecture behind agentic payments and the opportunities and challenges ahead.

Artificial intelligence has long supported payment decisions. Agentic AI goes further: it can interpret a user’s objective, decide what action to take and initiate a payment under delegated authority. That shift from “click to pay” to “decide and pay” could fundamentally change who, or what, participates in the financial system.

In the first episode of a new BFRR series on agentic payments, hosts Jonas Gross and Michael Blaschke welcome back Sonja Davidovic of the International Monetary Fund. Drawing on the IMF note “How Agentic AI Will Reshape Payments,” co-authored with Hervé Tourpe, they separate credible potential from hype.

Davidovic explains the core tension at the heart of the concept. AI systems reason probabilistically and adapt to new information. Payment infrastructures require clear authorization, auditability, legal finality and deterministic outcomes. A three-layer model offers a way to reconcile both worlds. Agents interpret intent and orchestrate actions in the first layer; mandates, budgets and authentication rules govern authorization in the second; established payment rails provide final settlement in the third.

The discussion moves from architecture to practical applications. E-commerce may be the most immediate use case, covering product selection, payment and returns. Agents could also identify anomalies and trigger compliance procedures, while treasury and liquidity management may benefit from autonomous allocation across fragmented markets.

The potential comes with difficult questions. How can an agent be prevented from exceeding its mandate? Who is liable when it makes the wrong decision? How can institutions contain cyber risk, protect personal data and explain opaque machine reasoning? What happens when thousands of agents react to the same market signal at once?

The episode also examines whether credit cards, stablecoins, tokenized deposits or CBDCs are best suited to machine-initiated transactions. The answer may depend on the use case. Adoption, Davidovic argues, will ultimately be determined by authorization, accountability, governance and trust.

Sonja Davidovic LinkedIn

Paper: How Agentic AI Will Reshape Payments

Previous BFRR Episode with Sonja Davidovic

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