More Than Mood Music: What an AI-Driven Economy Means for Bank Payments

Quick Summary

This year's Sibos theme is digital finance for an AI-driven economy, and Simon Eacott, Head of Payments at NatWest Group, says it is more than just mood music. AI is moving beyond providing information to making decisions, which makes payments increasingly invisible inside automated customer journeys. NatWest's research suggests agentic commerce adoption will be slower than the hype, but banks must be ready, and trust will decide it.

Why is AI at the top of the Sibos agenda?

Eacott says it would be odd if AI were not right at the top of the agenda of every conference like this, and not just for payments or banking but for the wider economy. For payments, the big change is that AI is going beyond just providing information and moving into the realms of actually making decisions.

What does that change for a bank's payments function?

It changes how banks and financial institutions interact with their customers. Customer journeys become much more automated and embedded in processes, so the payment behind it all becomes increasingly invisible.

Eacott thinks that is largely right. People do not wake up wanting to make a payment; they want to buy a cup of coffee or book a holiday. The industry's job is to separate the real customer value from the technology hype.

How quickly will agentic commerce arrive?

NatWest has done research into what its customers really want from things like agentic commerce. It shows that adoption is going to be a bit slower than some of the hype, but Eacott is clear that banks still need to be ready and developing propositions now.

Underpinning it all is what banks have done for centuries: trust, governance and accountability. Consumers and merchants need the right controls and the confidence that AI-generated transactions will happen the way they are supposed to.

FF NEWS TAKE:

The honest line here is the research finding: adoption will be slower than the hype. That is not a reason to wait, and Eacott does not suggest it is. It is a reason to build the trust layer properly while the volumes are small. If payments become invisible, the bank's role becomes the guarantee behind them, and that is a role banks are unusually well placed to play.