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Agentic commerce could significantly reshape commerce and payments if adoption scales, but building trust around authentication, liability and fraud will be critical before more autonomous transactions become widespread, Federal Reserve Governor Christopher J Waller said.
Speaking at Sibos 2026 in Miami, Waller said the payments industry was entering an emerging phase in which superintelligence agents could move beyond assisting consumers to independently shop and make payments on their behalf. Market participants broadly agree that agentic commerce is in an early phase, but it could significantly reshape commerce and payments if adoption scales, Waller said. He outlined two broad models. In the agent-assisted model, consumers use a superintelligence agent for product search and discovery but retain control of decisions and payments. In the agent-delegated model, consumers give an agent authority to shop and make payments on their behalf, subject to specified constraints and safeguards. Waller said consumer-to-business transactions are likely to be the first area of agentic commerce, with more autonomous, agent-delegated transactions requiring stronger trust mechanisms and guardrails. The biggest barrier to scaling agentic commerce, particularly the agent-delegated model, is building sufficient trust among buyers and sellers, he said, identifying authentication, liability and fraud as key challenges. Under agentic commerce, payment authentication would need to establish not only whether a buyer is authorised to make a payment, but whether an agent has the authority to make the payment on the buyer's behalf. Waller also raised the question of liability if an agent makes an incorrect purchase and said existing fraud detection systems may need to be recalibrated because they are largely designed around human behaviour rather than agent payment patterns. At the same time, technology firms, e-commerce platforms and payment service providers are developing protocols to standardise how agents interact with merchants and make payments. Card networks are also developing specifications for secure agent payments, including ways to register agents and record customer approvals. Waller said another key question for the industry would be whether agentic commerce develops around platform-specific or interoperable standards. Interoperable systems could allow different e-commerce platforms, agent interfaces and payment methods to work together. Waller further said superintelligence agents could become integrated into a wide range of payment flows and materially change the frequency and timing of transactions. Meeting this moment requires a proactive approach that balances innovation with the safety, integrity, and stability that underpin trust in payments, he said. (ANI)
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