At The Economic Times World Leaders Forum (ET WLF) 2026, a high-level panel featuring leaders from Visa, J.P. Morgan, Standard Chartered, and Coinbase examined how the rapid rise of autonomous AI agents is shifting payment dynamics from human buyers to machine-driven transactions.
Key Discussion Themes
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The Shift to “Agent-Ready” Commerce:
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Suresh Sethi (Visa): Highlighted that internet payment rails were originally designed for human interactions, but consumers are increasingly relying on AI agents to evaluate variants, build carts, and complete checkouts autonomously. Payment infrastructure must adapt to become “agent-ready.”
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Verifying Intent and Legitimacy:
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As AI agents begin managing real-world financial transactions, payment networks, merchants, and banks face the challenge of verifying machine intent and establishing transaction authenticity.
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Fighting AI-Powered Fraud:
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While bad actors utilize AI to automate attacks and orchestrate hyper-realistic phishing scams at scale, payment networks are countering by deploying AI to replace static fraud rules with real-time, adaptive risk profiling.
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Invisible Payment Infrastructure:
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Panelists noted that back-end payment processing rails will increasingly recede into the background, operating invisibly as consumers prioritize speed, reliability, and security over manual checkout experiences.
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Panel Participants
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Suresh Sethi — Group Country Manager (India & South Asia), Visa
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Madhav Kalyan — MD & Head of Payments (APAC), J.P. Morgan
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PD Singh — CEO (India & South Asia), Standard Chartered Bank
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John O’Loghlen — MD (APAC), Coinbase
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Moderator: Rahul Jain — India Head, BCG
