Waller says agentic commerce needs trust framework

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller used a speech to lay out where artificial intelligence is reshaping payments, focusing on cross-border transaction screening and the rise of AI agents that can shop and pay on a buyer’s behalf. Waller stopped short of proposing any rule or supervisory action, framing the remarks as his own view of an industry still working out basic questions of authentication and liability.

• Waller identifies two models of agentic commerce: “agent assisted,” where the buyer still pays, and “agent delegated,” where the AI acts autonomously
• He cites research finding large language models “can significantly reduce false-positive alerts” in sanctions and anti-money-laundering screening
• Watch for how card networks and e-commerce platforms resolve open questions on agent identity and liability that Waller leaves unanswered

• Early summer date of the Fed’s 2026 roundtable on agentic commerce
• 2 distinct models of agentic commerce outlined by Waller

Waller delivered the remarks, titled “Payments in the Age of AI Agents,” in a speech posted to the Federal Reserve’s website. He told the audience that combating illicit finance is “one of the clearest examples of where AI can drive efficiency and security gains” in cross-border payments, pointing to large language models’ ability to cut false positives in sanctions screening. He said he expects such models to “augment, rather than replace” faster anomaly-detection tools already used in payment systems.

Waller splits agentic commerce into two tracks

The bulk of the speech addresses what Waller calls agentic commerce, AI agents making e-commerce purchases. He distinguishes an “agent-assisted” model, where a human buyer still controls the purchase and payment, from an “agent-delegated” model, where the buyer hands an agent authority to shop and pay within set guardrails.

Waller said consumer-to-business transactions will likely see agent-assisted adoption first, with delegated buying following because it “introduces higher risks of unintended purchases.” He also flagged business-to-business purchases as “especially well suited” to agentic commerce given their recurring nature and existing budget rules, while noting that higher transaction values there “amplify the financial exposure from agent errors.”

Trust, not technology, is the stated bottleneck

The biggest barrier to scaling agentic commerce, particularly the agent-delegated model, is building sufficient trust among buyers and sellers.

Christopher Waller, Federal Reserve Governor

Waller named three specific gaps: authentication of an agent’s purchasing authority, liability when an agent buys the wrong item, and fraud.

He also raised the unresolved question of whether the market settles on platform-specific standards or interoperable ones that would “level the playing field for smaller merchants and payment providers,” and whether commerce systems end up open to any shopping agent or closed to a retailer’s proprietary tool.

What the speech does not settle

The speech carries the Fed’s standard disclaimer that “the views expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of my colleagues on the Federal Reserve Board or the Federal Open Market Committee,” meaning it commits the Board to no policy, supervisory guidance or rulemaking timeline. Waller cites a May 26, 2026 roundtable he hosted on agentic commerce but does not disclose participant names, outcomes or any follow-up the Fed plans to take.

He also poses several questions without answering them, including what standards are “still missing for agents to carry identity, consent, and payment credentials across the full e-commerce stack” and whether payment rails will need to adapt “in a future where agentic payments scale dramatically.” Those remain open for the industry, not the Fed, to resolve.

The BlockWest read. Waller is signaling that the Fed sees agentic commerce as a market-structure problem before it is a payments-infrastructure problem, leaving card networks, e-commerce platforms and AI firms to write the authentication and liability rules that will determine who bears losses when an agent buys wrong. That vacuum favors incumbents building proprietary agent-and-payment stacks now, ahead of any Fed or CFPB intervention.

The next concrete marker is whether the Fed publishes findings or a follow-up from the May 26, 2026 roundtable Waller referenced, or whether card networks finalize the agent-registration specifications he described as still in development.

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