AI will reshape payments, but trust will be real game

Meanwhile, the Economic Times daily newspaper is available online now.

Key points

• (Catch all the Business News, Breaking News and Latest News Updates on The Economic Times.).
• ET World Leaders Forum 2026: AI will reshape payments, but trust will be the real battleground.
• The panel additionally featured Madhav Kalyan, MD & Head of Payments – Asia Pacific, J.P.
• AI in paymentspayment securitytrust in AI transactionsdigital payment revolutionAI agents in commercefuture of banking.
• Banks and networks must verify agent intent and transaction legitimacy.

ET World Leaders Forum 2026: AI will reshape payments, but trust will be the real battleground. ET OnlineLast Updated: Aug 21, 2026, 03: 07: 00 PM IST.

AI agents are increasingly performing purchases. It presents new payment challenges. Banks and networks must verify agent intent and transaction legitimacy. New security measures will distinguish between genuine and malicious automated activity. Payment rails may become invisible as consumers focus on speed and reliability.

"Agents are today going out and doing the purchase for you. They are looking at variants, creating the carts and doing checkouts." That comment from Suresh Sethi, Group Country Manager, India & South Asia, Visa, captures a potentially fundamental shift coming to payments: the buyer may shortly not be human at all. AI agents are increasingly being designed to discover products, compare options, create carts and eventually complete purchases and payments on behalf of users. But as machines commence spending human capital, the biggest question for banks, payment networks and merchants will be whether they can trust the transaction.

Indian CEOs should stop 'just asking questions' and start building with AI: Anthropic India MD Speaking at The Economic Times World Leaders Forum 2026 during a panel, Sethi remarked the internet was built largely for human interaction, but commerce now needs to become "agent-ready". Live Events.

In practice, the panel additionally featured Madhav Kalyan, MD & Head of Payments – Asia Pacific, J.P. Morgan; PD Singh, CEO, India & South Asia, Standard Chartered Bank; and John O'Loghlen, MD – APAC, Coinbase, and was moderated by Rahul Jain, India Head, BCG. That means websites and payment systems must be able to recognise legitimate AI agents, allow them to navigate transactions and, crucially, establish that an agent is acting on the user's actual intent. The new payment password may be intent For years, payment security has centred on authentication and payment credentials. In an agentic world, that may not be enough. "If I am going on a journey and actually purchasing something, I need to be sure that the site where the purchase is happening is able to understand that this was the intent, " Sethi remarked. That is where tokenisation and new forms of payment credentials could become significant. The system needs to distinguish between an AI agent acting on your instructions and a malicious bot trying to exploit the same infrastructure. And AI is projected to produce that battle harder.: ET World Leaders Forum 2026: Smriti Irani on politics, power and the cost of being a woman Fraudsters can apply AI to create convincing phishing messages, automate attacks and operate at much greater scale. But payment networks can additionally apply AI to identify suspicious behaviour. Sethi remarked the industry will need to move away from static fraud rules towards real-time, risk-based intelligence, looking at factors such as transaction velocity, timing, value and behavioural patterns. While suspicious ones are slowed down so systems can establish whether the intent is genuine, the result could be what he called "dynamic friction": legitimate transactions move through seamlessly. For context, the payment rail could disappear The shift could additionally change the role of banks and payment businesses. Madhav Kalyan, MD & Head of Payments – Asia Pacific at J.P. Morgan, remarked consumers ultimately don't care which payment rail is being employed. They care whether their funds moves swiftly, reliably, cheaply and safely. Cards, UPI, wallets, tokenised deposits and stablecoins could therefore become increasingly invisible to the customer. But that does not mean the institutions behind them become irrelevant. Banks will still need to verify identity, establish whether an agent has the authority to act, settle transactions, move data and ensure the entire process remains auditable, Kalyan remarked. PD Singh, CEO, India & South Asia, Standard Chartered Bank, remarked AI could fundamentally reshape banking, with banks potentially looking highly different over the next three to five years as adoption accelerates. For Coinbase's John O'Loghlen, the growing interaction between machines makes guardrails even more significant. Human oversight, regulation, governance and security will remain critical as AI agents commence making decisions with real financial consequences. The next payment revolution, then, maybe regarding figuring out when a machine should be allowed to spend your capital – and how everyone else can be sure it is doing exactly what you asked it to do. Add Now!

In short, AI will reshape payments, but trust will be real game is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.