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Insights and Expertise

makers with the knowledge and skills to manage its risks,
One of the biggest unanswered opportunities and impact across the organization.

questions in agentic payments The future
is responsibility. Agentic payments are coming whether businesses are
ready or not. The question is whether organizations un-
derstand the implications and interdependencies before
viders, bank accounts, gateways, fraud tools and internal adoption takes place.
procedures, but these components usually operate inde-
pendently from each other. No single person oversees the The future will require new governance models, and most
whole process, let alone makes informed decisions about importantly, new skills. Education will become one of the
the latest innovations and risks associated with payment most important competitive advantages, because the pro-
and banking flows. fessionals responsible for payment and banking decisions
will need to understand not only technology, but also risk,
Agentic payments introduce a completely new layer of de- compliance, fraud, customer experience and operational
cision-making that affects every area of an organization: impact.
customer experience, risk management, technology, prod-
uct development, data security, compliance, finance, sales This is precisely why the Chief Payment Officer role is
and growth, and more. Payment and banking must be a emerging. The CPayO is responsible for understanding
standalone function, an essential element of the business how money moves through an organization and how pay-
strategy, not just a part of finance. Adding an AI agent will ment and banking decisions impact every area of the or-
only complicate this. ganization. As AI agents become increasingly involved in
financial decision-making, businesses will need a dedicat-
When a company designs an AI agent from a technology ed specialist who can connect these functions, oversee the
perspective, it will most definitely ignore the interdepen- risks and ensure that innovation creates value rather than
dencies and will create compliance concerns, fraud expo- introducing costly operational, compliance and financial
sure, operational issues, or financial losses elsewhere in problems.
the organization.
But without proper education, businesses will continue to
Before businesses can safely adopt agentic payments, they make payment and banking decisions based on assump-
must first understand how money moves through their tions or advice from their suppliers—whose interests like-
organization and how payment and banking decisions af- ly do not align with their own.
fect every other function within it. Otherwise, they risk
introducing a powerful new technology into a system that Understanding how payments and banking affect every
is already struggling to manage the risks of the old one. function within an organization will become one of the
most valuable skills in the age of agentic AI, because the
How to prepare before it is too late companies that understand these interdependencies will
be in a far stronger position to manage risk while taking
The mistake most businesses will make is assuming that advantage of innovation.
agentic payments are purely a technology project. They
are not. They are a payment and banking project, a compli-
ance project, a fraud project, a customer experience project Viktoria Soltesz is the CEO and founder of PSP Angels and The Soltesz
and a risk management project all at the same time. Institute. She is a leading advocate for strategy-led financial operations,
ethical industry practices, and structured education in an area too often
Before deploying AI agents, businesses must first under- overlooked in traditional business training. PSP Angels is a globally
stand who will be responsible for decisions, how authority awarded, independent payment and banking consultancy that has sup-
will be delegated, which controls will be applied and how ported over 1,000 companies in building scalable, secure financial infra-
disputes will be resolved when things go wrong. They structures. The Soltesz Institute is the first and only independent online
must review their payment flows, banking relationships, organization offering EU-accredited training and certifications focused
fraud controls, terms and conditions, customer communi- exclusively on payments and banking. To contact Viktoria, please email
cation, and internal governance structures. viktoria@pspangels.com.

Most importantly, they must educate the people respon-
sible for managing payment and banking tasks, because
technology alone will not solve these challenges. Inter-
estingly, the companies that will succeed with agentic
payments will not necessarily be the ones with the most
advanced AI, but the ones that recognize payment and
banking as a standalone business function. Payment and
banking decisions need to be made by dedicated decision-

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