The UK government and financial regulators are laying the groundwork for a future where AI could autonomously handle your payments, from bill settlements to shopping transactions, as part of a broader push to modernise the country’s payments system.
In the Payments Forward Plan published on Thursday (26 February), officials outlined an ambitious three-year roadmap to revamp the payments sector. The document highlights the need to support emerging technologies like tokenisation and ‘agentic AI’, which could enable AI systems to act independently on behalf of users.
Agentic AI refers to advanced AI agents capable of making decisions and executing actions without constant human oversight. In the context of payments, this could mean AI tools that automatically pay bills, optimise subscriptions, or even negotiate and complete purchases based on predefined preferences.
The plan specifically calls for a review of existing payments regulations, including the Payment Services Regulations and E-Money Regulations, to assess whether updates are needed to accommodate agentic AI payments.
HM Treasury plans to consult on these changes in the second quarter of 2026, with a response expected by the end of the year. This could involve tweaks to strong customer authentication rules to ensure security while allowing AI-driven transactions.
“Agentic AI in particular could support people to automatically optimise their household finances, reducing inertia through automatic switching,” notes a recent FCA call for input on AI’s long-term impact on retail financial services, dubbed the Mills Review. The review envisions AI acting as a ‘personal intermediary’ in payments, potentially routing transactions or initiating them on users’ behalf.
A Bank of England speech by Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden earlier this month emphasised the need for next-generation payments infrastructure to support ‘AI agents making payments on our behalf’.
AI which recommends and pays for products
Industry reports from firms like KPMG highlight how agentic commerce, where AI chatbots not only recommend products but also pay for them, is already influencing consumer behaviour. Estimates suggest that half of ChatGPT users in the US used AI for holiday shopping assistance last year, and payment-capable agents are the next step.
The UK’s move comes amid a global race to integrate AI into finance. In Europe, the AI Act, set to fully apply from August 2026, provides a framework but leaves gaps in autonomous payments, according to legal experts at Taylor Wessing.
UK regulators aim to fill these by ensuring innovation doesn’t compromise security or consumer protection.
The plan is part of a larger effort to address “regulatory congestion” in payments, following a 2023 review. By providing a clear timeline, officials hope to give firms certainty to innovate.
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