Upgrading Banking for the Age of Machine Commerce

The future of payments isn’t about inventing new models—it’s about upgrading existing ones. That’s the message from Mick Fennell at Temenos, who spoke with Sibos in Miami about why agentic commerce is ready to accelerate.

Agentic payments use AI agents to make decisions and move value on behalf of people or businesses. While this sounds futuristic, it’s already happening behind the scenes in corporate workflows—where structured rules and complex automation are common needs.

The key challenge isn’t developing the technology itself, but rather modernizing banking infrastructure to handle:

  • High speed and volume transactions
  • Event-driven, API-first processing
  • Cloud-native systems
  • Clear controls over agent decision-making

What Breaks When Banks Try Agentic Payments?

The first failure points aren’t conceptual—they’re operational:

  1. Technology stack limitations: Can the system handle the required performance and capacity?
  2. Risk management gaps: How will banks control automated decision-making and prevent unauthorized transactions?

This isn’t about replacing trust with automation, but rather extending it to new forms of digital commerce—similar to how direct debits already operate under defined rules and limits.

The difference is scale: agentic payments can process transactions at machine speed while still maintaining essential consumer protections.

Four Types of Digital Money Banks Must Understand:

Mick Fennell categorized digital money into four useful types, drawing an analogy to The Four Musketeers:

  1. CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies): Public money issued by regulators—the most stable and trustworthy foundation.
  2. Stablecoins: Privately issued tokens offering speed and innovation but requiring careful risk management.
  3. Tokenized deposits: Customer deposits represented in digital form, extending bank trust to new use cases.
  4. Central Bank Tokens: Newer forms of programmable money with potential for advanced applications

Banks that can integrate these different forms of digital money—while maintaining their role as trusted intermediaries—will be best positioned to lead the next wave of financial innovation.