Finance Firms Deploy Agentic AI to Automate Payments and Trading

Financial services companies are moving beyond chatbots to deploy AI systems that can autonomously complete complex tasks like purchasing concert tickets, executing stock trades, and processing loan applications with minimal human intervention.

At the Money 20/20 Europe conference in Amsterdam last week, Mastercard, ING, and Worldline demonstrated what they called Europe's first live end-to-end agentic payment. A user instructed an AI assistant to find concert tickets within specific parameters—location, date, and budget—and the system located options, accepted the user's selection, and completed the purchase after human approval.

The demonstration reflects a broader shift in how financial institutions are implementing AI. Scarlett Sieber, the conference's chief strategy and growth officer, told CNN that AI adoption has moved beyond startups and is now happening across traditional banks and fintech companies alike.

Autonomous trading and code generation

Investing platform eToro has upgraded its AI assistant from providing portfolio advice to executing trades within preset user limits. The company's POTU$ app monitors Donald Trump's social media activity and can place trades within seconds when the U.S. president posts content likely to move markets, according to CEO Yoni Assia.

Assia told CNN that AI usage across eToro has grown roughly tenfold in six months, with 95% of new code now AI-written, up from zero two years ago. He emphasized that AI remains "useless without humans steering it."

Customer service automation and workforce reduction

Swedish payments company Klarna built an AI assistant with OpenAI in 2024 that the company claims performs the work of 700 full-time customer service agents. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told CNN that Klarna's workforce has fallen from 6,000 to fewer than 3,000 people in recent years, while revenue per employee has increased.

Last month, Klarna launched a shopping search app within ChatGPT. However, Bloomberg previously reported that Siemiatkowski acknowledged cost-cutting had led to "lower quality" service, prompting the company to rehire some human agents.

Speaking to CNN, Siemiatkowski conceded that AI could cause job losses across industries, with potential "short-term negative implications in specific job areas," though he declined to specify what share of Klarna's positions had been replaced by AI.

Traditional banks embrace automation

Dutch bank ABN AMRO has reduced its physical branch network from 500 locations in 2010 to 26 today as part of a digital transformation that includes AI deployment. CEO Marguerite Bérard told CNN that 85% of bank employees use AI in daily work, and customers conduct millions of conversations with the bank's AI bot "Ana." The institution plans to cut 5,200 jobs by 2028 from 2024 levels.

Why it matters

The financial industry's embrace of agentic AI signals a fundamental shift in how transactions and services are delivered, with potential implications for employment, regulatory oversight, and operational risk. A University of Cambridge report surveying over 600 firms and regulators worldwide projects that AI agent deployment in finance will jump from 24% today to 81% by 2030, but warns that technological change "currently outpaces the supervisory frameworks and technical capacities required to oversee them."

Research firm Gartner predicted last year that more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027 due to escalating costs, unclear business value, or inadequate risk controls. A recent Accenture and Wharton report noted that leaders must determine which decisions to delegate to AI and where human judgment must remain central.

Bérard emphasized the importance of human oversight, stating her rule is "guardrails but no handcuffs," with "always a human on top and in the loop."

These details were first reported by CNN.