AI Agents Transform Payments as Visa, Mastercard, and Qonto Tackle Trust, Liability, and Regulation

Visa and Mastercard are no longer asking whether AI agents will transform payments—that’s a given. The question is how to maintain trust in a purchase where humans no longer validate anything in real time. How can we ensure that an artificial intelligence agent delegated by a user doesn’t exceed its authority? How can we manage liability in case of fraud or error? How can we maintain regulatory traceability for a transaction initiated by an algorithm?

These questions will shape the economic and regulatory model of payments for the coming decade. The two American giants have launched intensive development programs, as evidenced by their corporate communications and recent patent filings.

Qonto has already taken the plunge

In France, Qonto has taken a significant lead by launching The Operator, its first AI agent directly integrated into the application. The Operator allows users to create cards, draft and send invoices, and schedule payments using natural language—without navigating the interface menus. It’s still assistance, not complete delegation. But the direction is clear. AI Agents will soon take over the task.

This launch illustrates a broader dynamic in the ecosystem of European professional neo-banks: the conversational interface is no longer an accessory, it is the entry point towards a complete reorganization of the relationship between the user and their financial tools.

The real disruption is not AI Agents in payments. It’s payment becoming a secondary act, the natural consequence of a decision made by an authorized agent, rather than a conscious action by the user.

The regulatory implications that no one has yet resolved

The legal framework for payments is built around the explicit consent of the payer. The PSD2 directive, the PSR regulation that will replace it, strong customer authentication requirements—the entire European regulatory arsenal assumes that a natural person actively validates a transaction. When an AI agent decides and executes, who is the payer in the legal sense? At what point does consent occur? How can the delegation chain be documented to meet audit requirements?

These issues require regulatory adaptation, which neither the European Commission nor national authorities have yet begun to formalize. Pressure will come from incidents that force regulators to intervene, and from players like Visa and Mastercard who have a vested interest in ensuring their networks can be used by AI agents within a clear legal framework.

What finance departments need to anticipate when introducing AI Agents

For businesses, the introduction of AI agents in the payment process raises internal governance questions that are not yet on the radar of CFOs. Who is authorized to delegate payment rights to an agent? What are the permitted limits? How is this delegation integrated into internal control policies and audit procedures?

Companies that have considered these issues beforehand will be the ones that deploy these tools the fastest and with the least internal regulatory friction.

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(Featured image by Igor Omilaev via Unsplash)

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First published in Finyear. A third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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