BFSI Summit: 'Agentic payments need clear liability rules to build trust'

At the BFSI Insight Summit 2026, Amazon Pay, Juspay and Visa executives called for clear liability rules, robust authentication and traceability to build trust in agentic payments

India’s agentic payments ecosystem needs robust authentication, traceability and liability frameworks before artificial intelligence (AI) agents can transact autonomously on behalf of consumers at scale, industry executives said during a panel discussion on agentic payments.

 

Speaking at a session at the Business Standard BFSI Summit titled Machines with Mandates: Building India’s Trust Layer for Agentic Payments, panellists Nirav Kamdar, chief technology officer at Amazon Pay, Pramod Mulani, vice-president, global strategy at Juspay, and Rishi Chhabra, country manager, India, Visa, said establishing trust among consumers, AI agents and merchants would be critical to the adoption of such payments.

 

“It can’t be the agent. It has to be the human or the regulated entity on behalf of which the agent is acting on,” said Kamdar.

 

 

He said liability would depend on the circumstances of a transaction. If a customer fails to specify appropriate safeguards or intent in a mandate, the responsibility could rest with the customer. However, if the customer provides clear consent and the agent acts outside the mandate, the regulated entity responsible for the agent could bear the consequences. “If something goes wrong, what makes you move the car very fast is not the accelerator, it's the fact that there is a brake. That's what gives you the confidence that you can move fast. Similarly, having a good liability framework will help agentic payments a lot more,” he added.

 

Chhabra said existing liability rules were designed for human-led transactions and would need to evolve as machines increasingly act on behalf of consumers. “The rules were defined in a human world. The rules weren't defined for the agent world,” Chhabra said, adding that the industry would need to establish who is responsible when something goes wrong.

 

While travel bookings and e-commerce offer opportunities for agentic payments, Kamdar expects utility payments and subscription renewals to be among the earliest use cases to gain traction.

 

“I feel like the first use cases are going to be the utility ones, like the bill payment or the subscription renewal,” he said, citing the low risk and high friction associated with such transactions. These could help consumers avoid missing credit card or electricity bills, he added.

 

Mulani identified travel as an early opportunity, given the multiple decisions involved in planning a journey, from choosing dates and preferred berths. “Wherever there is a lot of variability, I think agents will add a lot of value in terms of trying to make it easy for you,” Mulani said.

 

The panellists also said there is need for reliable agent identification, authentication, consent and auditability. Kamdar said platforms remained cautious about allowing agents access to their systems due to concerns about customer data protection.

 

Mulani standards for agentic payments could emerge within the next 12-18 months. He said the industry is still establishing what information needs to be carried across the payment chain.

 

Chhabra said humans were likely to remain in the loop as part of the payment process for now, particularly at the authentication stage.