Podcast: Reimagining payment experiences with agentic AI

Whitney McDonald 08:06:01
Happy New Year and welcome to The Buzz a fin AI news podcast. My name is Whitney McDonald, and I’m the editor of fin AI news. Fin AI news has rebranded from bank automation news, marking the next step in our mission to lead the conversation on innovation and Financial Services Technology. Joining me today, January 6, 2026 is Zachary Aaron, a principal at Deloitte Consulting. Zachary is here to discuss agentic AI’s role in shaping the future of payments. Thanks for joining us.

Zachary Aron 08:06:27
Zachary, sounds good. Whitney, thank you very much for having me. Zach Aaron, I am Deloitte global and US banking and capital markets payments leader. I have over 30 years of experience focused on payments overall. And I lead Deloitte practice on payments. We have over 2000 people globally that focus on payments, literally, 24 by seven for all of our clients, which includes everyone from corporates that are thinking about payment acceptance and how payments can help enable their business to the fintechs, to the traditional networks, the banks, and also the central banks and the regulatory areas. So we try to take really a complete view and look of payment around payments, so we can really help advise our clients on how they best can make payments fast, safe, secure, and enable people, individuals and companies, to really be able to best use their money the way that they have intended to do.

Whitney McDonald 08:07:40
As you said you’ve got about 30 years under your belt, so I’m excited to have this conversation, especially during a time with AI agentic payments. It’s obviously a lot of change. There’s been a huge evolution just this year. So why don’t we kind of start with the state of agentic AI right now? Where are we today with agentic payments?

Speaker 1 08:08:02
Sure, and I’d say maybe even the start. I think payments is one of those really fun areas where people don’t realize that AI has been involved in payments for literally over 30 years. And we, you know, when we look at, you know, payment processors and networks that were actually that have been using artificial intelligence to detect fraud in real time, to be able to look at patterns in real time, so that when a payment came through, they can immediately flag it as a safe or an unsafe payment. And so I’ve always felt that way about cloud. People have said cloud and payments have been around for literally 4040, almost 50 years. And so there’s a little bit of a misnomer in that this is a new concept for the payment space. And so AI has always been a part of it. What’s really happened to your to your point, Whitney, is we really see an evolution no different than, you know, the broader business area and broader technology around Hey, I has evolved from the, you know, the artificial intelligence to analytical. AI, conversational AI, such as your interaction with a chat bot, your ability to use voice to be able to make transactions like paying bills now, all the way to where we are on agentic AI, where we can start to create really true, if you will, agents to be able to accomplish tasks around payments. And so it’s definitely become prominent this year. I think this is the year, and I’ll say it’s an early year. I mean, we’re early in this story. This is the year where we’re starting to lay the foundation around agentic AI. We are starting to think about interesting use cases where this can be applied. We’re also starting to lay out standards. And so what we’re seeing as an example. Or you see the payment networks rolling out standards for how to enable agentic payments. You see some of the technology companies trying to also say, this is how you can execute an agentic transaction from the moment that you want to be able to pay. And so what we’re really seeing is a lot of entities coming in trying to lay the foundation. And I would say we’re sort of going to move to where, you know, how do we enable an agentic transaction probably happens next, and then from there, how we actually reimagine and enable real agentic experiences. And so again, I think we’re really early in this story around the agentic piece, but we’re also very well into the story around artificial intelligence overall and how it’s enabled payments.

Whitney McDonald 08:10:52
Yeah, I think that’s really important to note that, you know, AI isn’t necessarily a new player, it’s just we’re kind of getting into this evolution. Where the technology is going, what it’s enabling that is now, you know, new you’ve mentioned here some use cases that you’re starting to see emerge. You talked about the foundation. Obviously, we’re in the early innings of where agentic AI, you know, can go. You have to start somewhere. Let’s talk about what are some of those use cases that you are seeing, Where can this kind of be a reality?

Speaker 1 08:11:27
Yeah, and I think what we’re, you know, what we’re seeing right now from players in the space is right now trying to do, what I would say is sort of like 1.0 type payments. In other words, I would like to buy something. How can the agent go out and buy on my behalf? As an example, we’re also seeing examples of, how can the agent help suggest a payment, and so that’s a little bit on the front end. We’re also starting to see how can an agent be there to help immediately detect perhaps a fraudulent payment and provide alerts. Similarly, how can an agent help provide support around payments, enabling disputes, as an example, if you need to contest the payment. And so we’re seeing a little bit of that, which I think is sort of, again, sort of foundational step. We look at a payment, we look at the flow, we look at the interaction. We go, where can an agent do this job better? What we are finding, though, is, you know, thinking further afield is, how do you really reimagine something? And so one of the things as an example that we’re looking at, and to use, sort of a possible example is say it’s, you know, it’s a Friday night, and you realize, like, oh, it’s date night for me and my spouse. And you know what, I just I have not given it enough thought, and I need to plan a really cool date night for my spouse. So I really want to go to movies, and I want to be able to go to dinner, and I want to be able to kind of, you know, maybe it’d be great to have, like, you know, get some flowers at the, you know, to start the date off, and and all those sort of things. And now, the way I would do that today is, right. I’m going to go on, I’m going to call up the restaurant, or I’m going to go on an app and see if they have space, or I’m going to try to look at a variety of restaurants, and I’m going to look at their different ratings that they have. Similarly, I got to go and I got to, you know, pull up and look at, you know, what movies are available and the like. And now I got to figure out how the timing of all of it works, right? So now I’ve got to do 6789, 10 things. I kind of throw up my hands, I close my eyes, I take a guess, maybe I did, well, maybe I didn’t, on my date night. Or I have to go, sorry, it’s not dinner and a movie, you know, how about we order pizza and, you know, you know, watch, watch something on the couch, which I probably failed on, on that, on that assignment. So yet I’m going to try to figure this out. But now maybe I’m going to go to say a search engine, or I’m going to use an app, and I’m actually going to say I need ideas for a date night that involve dinner in a movie, ideally Italian, ideally a rom com. I also want to make sure that there’s enough time from when the dinner ends to when the movie begins that I can also get the popcorn and the Raisinets, which, by the way, is a phenomenal combination put together, you know, a couple of sodas. And also, by the way, it’d be really cool if we could maybe stop at the ice cream parlor on the way back. And also, by the way, it’d be great if I could get, you know, a dozen roses. And now an agentic agent is going to say, let me do some work. You should actually go to this restaurant. They have a seat available at 6pm you can then have an hour and a half dinner, and you’ll be able to make the 8pm showing of the latest great rom com out there. And we’re going to get you seats, by the way, if you know you want the popcorn and raisin nets, we can get that pre ordered for you. You know, what do you want to drive or do you want to get a ride share? And I start adding that in. They’re like, How much money do you want to spend? And I’ll go, You know what? You know, I have the best spouse on Earth. Money’s no object. Get the best seats, right? All those sort of things.

Unknown Speaker 08:15:38
Get two boxes of raisin nets,

Speaker 1 08:15:40
exactly, right? We’re going to double up on the raisin nets. In fact, no budget, right there. You know what? There is absolutely no budget when it comes to good popcorn and raisin nets and gummy bears, to be honest. And it’s like, hey, you know, by the way, to maximize your time at the restaurant. Do you kind of know, is there a favorite dish that you have? Do you want to, you know, pre order a bottle of wine and have that ready? Or, you know what it’s gonna let’s have fun. Get the champagne. All right, we’ll even send that request for the champagne. So now what the agent has done is it suggested an experience. Now let’s move it to payments. I have potentially a payment for the car service, for the restaurant, for the movie theater, for the tickets and the concession I still have to, you know, and maybe even you know, the ice cream place at the end, imagine now this experience says, Do you want to pay for this stuff now? And that way, also you’re not fumbling around. You’re also maybe not even thinking about, Oh, well, Shoot, maybe money wasn’t no object, or whatever the case may be, as things went around, you’re like, you know what? That would be great. And I can show up. We’ll be at home. The car service comes. I just get out of the car. I walk into the restaurant. The wine’s already there. We’ve eaten, right? I maybe, you know, go back on my app and said, Yeah, I had the lasagna, and, you know, my spouse had the scampi. Great, done. I walk in the popcorn and raisin nets are right there. And there the tickets were printed out. I go get the double box of the rate of the raisin nets and the popcorn, little extra butter too. And then, you know, the seats are there, the car is there. Right when the movie ends, it takes us to the ice cream we got in before it was over. They already had the rocky road ready to go, and then takes us home. And I maybe never reached for my wallet and it said everything was paid for. Or even at the end, it said, here’s the total for everything. Are you good? And you’re like, yeah, by the way, I like to tip these people some stuff. You do it, you’re done. And when we think about that agentic AI experience, we have made payments invisible and easy, and we’ve taken that challenge out. It’s going to split the payments out to the movie theater, to the restaurant, the ice cream people, the car people. And I’ve basically been able to have an easier experience, easier to find, easier to pay, and I’ve really been able to enjoy my date. And so when we think about the agentic AI experience that’s coming up. We’re actually thinking about really reimagining not one payment, but an entire experience. So you think about that. You can now think about all sorts of things, travel as an example. You think about businesses. And you think about just even how businesses have to procure supplies and all the different things. And now you could have an agent that just says, Hey, we’re nearing the end of the month. You’ve got to, you know, this is normally the time you want to replenish. I looked at your cash flow. This is what that looks like. How about, you know, we pay these invoices this way. Place these orders. This is where you’re going to get the better vendor discount on supplies. You know, if you wait another week, you can get this deal. And all of a sudden, we’re stringing together multiple transactions into one thing. We’ve created time savings. We’ve created safety as well, and we’ve created the ability to customize the way those payments work and those transactions work for the way that that individual or that business really wants to operate.

Whitney McDonald 08:19:33
Now, to go back just a little bit here, because obviously, like the the sound of all of that is, you know, it’s promising and it’s exciting, and you don’t want to have to worry about, you know? Okay, now we’ll go through the payments process at all of these different, you know, when you’re talking about the date, all of these different places, the restaurant, the theater, wherever you are, let’s kind of talk about the reality of getting there. You talked a little bit about the foundation and how we’re kind of laying the foundation in 2025 let’s talk about the things that need to go into that foundation to ensure that you know, if you’re enabling this type of experience, that you do have accountability, liability, trust, that you have all of those pieces in place in order to enable you know, The magical date experience, what what needs to be? What do you need to think about? What do you talk to your clients about?

Speaker 1 08:20:27
Yeah, the great, great question, Whitney and you actually, I mean, I think you actually really know that, like this is the number. Like the number, everyone goes, Okay, love the idea. How do we make it happen? Because one of the things that we now need to be able to do is, when you are bringing in, if you will, the agent that is fundamentally making these suggestions and enabling these transactions, you need to do a couple of things. One is be able to and they to have that person have control over that agent. I need. Be able to have the choices around everything from my budget to the vendors or the merchants that I want to be able to do, to be able to spend, to frequent. Pardon me, you know, I can see I want to be able to have preferences what I like and don’t like, I want to be able to authorize, maybe up to a certain limit, or the ability to say I want to change that in the middle of the flow. So I need to be able to give a level of personal control. That’s one piece. The second piece is within the infrastructural aspect, because now what you need to be able to have is participate. You know, ultimately, at the end of the day, you’re enabling payment transactions, which means you’re asking banks to essentially say valid person sending the transaction, someone saying, I could this is a valid receipt of a transaction. And now this is a valid agent, and this is an agent that should have been doing what it was doing, that was doing it in accordance to how I wanted that, that transaction to occur. And so you need to be able to create that ability to say, I have a valid agent, and it’s a valid transaction. The third thing that you need to be able to do is, in order is to be have all that is, you need to look at your operational aspects around how you support those transactions, so that when they do happen, if I come back later and say, Uh oh, that no, no, no, I got overcharged. I didn’t have five boxes of Raisinets. I had two right? How do I make that change? And people are able to look at that and say, Yes, that was the movie theater concession transaction. These other transactions were good in that chain. This is the one that they’re disputing. And how do I appropriately handle that? And similarly, I want to be able to see each and every one of those transactions if I look at it on my app or my statement, whatever the case may be. And so it actually involves securing the entire chain, from all the way to the front end, all the way through to how you authorize, settle and support and service that transaction, as well as adding in that additional level to ensure we have true agent to agent validation as well.

Whitney McDonald 08:23:35
Yeah, it kind of changes the authentication process. Who are you authenticating? Obviously, we’re all familiar with, you know, the biometrics or two factor authentication. Now you’re, you’re validating or authenticating agents that they should be making these decisions or, you know, approving these transactions. And obviously, with the guidelines or the guardrails that you mentioned to up to a certain amount, things like that are definitely important. But, yeah, those are all questions that that definitely come up when it when it comes to, you know, liability, you know, who’s responsible for these transactions?

Speaker 1 08:24:13
Well, you know you’re absolutely right. And, I mean, we did, we did some research, and exactly to your point, number, top two concerns. So, so the good news, if you will, is when we talk about these things, and we, you know, we surveyed consumers on the on, you know, on their preferences. We also surveyed businesses, and you have a majority, greater than 50% on both consumers and businesses that says, I want to try this. That being said, the flip side of that equation is when you list that, where are going to be the concerns around how you would use this to drive a good amount of the way that you make your your paying decisions. 58% said, Look, security, data, privacy hacking, number one concern. 57% almost the exact same amount, also said incorrect decisions that were being made. And so the other aspect to what you’ve said, and this is why we’re sort of doing this in this step function way, is as much as we want to roll out the great date, you know, Agent right now is you have to ensure trust, and that’s the number one thing, and that means prove that you can do a transaction in a trustworthy way, prove that you’re going to keep people’s data secure, prove that you’re not going to the agent Isn’t now going to run amok on what I’m doing or or, I think the other thing that we’re hearing is start to overly suggest things, and it turns from an agent that’s acting on my behalf to an agent that’s acting on someone else’s behalf and all like, and it’s now basically spamming me with, Hey, do you want to go on an. Their date over and over and over again, and you know? And that’s not what I want. And so the thing we talk to our clients about is create that level of security, focus on doing the basics right, but also design it so that it is acting in the best interest of the end user, and if you’re not, if you’re not doing it that way, then your level of adoption and your margin for error becomes extremely low.

Whitney McDonald 08:26:34
Now let’s kind of talk about 2026 here. We talked about 2025 what, where we kind of stood, what was, what conversations were had between, you know, you and clients. Now, 2026 what could be tangible experiences? Do you think we’re going to get to the, you know, the great date? Or do you, do you think it’ll still continue to kind of be like a pump, the brake, slow roll, maybe a hybrid of that. What’s your expectation for the year? Likely a hybrid

Speaker 1 08:27:08
and, and, and, I think the you know, I think we’re going to see some, some really interesting things be, be, be offered out there. It may not be the great date, but it may be certain things that perhaps are linked purchases around a common topic, such as, you know, as an example, travel might very well be an interesting one, where you kind of, you know, you think about things that are commonly linked. You bought the airfare. Do you need a hotel? You bought a trip? Do you want to add a sightseeing package? Things of that nature? I think we’re going to look at what I would say is more tightly connected, coupled transactions that are going to be there, are going to be brought out there. There’s still a lot of work. And I think we’re going to see that kind of hybrid attempts kind of come as people will really want to test right the efficacy and the safety of the agents. I also think, you know, we talk a lot about the things that we can experience every single day. I would be remiss. I think we’re going to see a lot of movement on the infrastructure side with agents. I think we’re going to see that on servicing. And I think we’re definitely going to see that on fraud. And I think we’re going to see a lot of, how do we ensure that, you know, agent to agent transactions are going to be safe and secure. And so I think we’re going to see a little, a lot of that, you know, if you will, the stuff you don’t see the middle, back office side of payments happen on the agentic side. And I think you’re going to see a couple of these hybrid rollouts, and then maybe we’ll get to the great date agent as well.

Whitney McDonald 08:28:51
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai