As the RBA considers where Australia’s payment system most urgently needs reform, a new fault line is emerging in banking and fintech lobbying: when to regulate agentic AI.
The Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, ANZ and others are urging the RBA to act now, while NAB, Visa, Amex, Apple and tech associations are arguing this would be premature in submissions to the RBA’s Review of Payments System Regulation (RPSP) published this week.
Agentic AI is autonomous software that is given both the instructions and permission to run multi-step processes. On a simple level, it’s an AI agent being able not just find you the right flight or ETF, but purchase it for you also. In finance more broadly, agentic AI’s applications are significant both in how companies can tap into user behaviour better, but also in major cost pools such as fraud and scam investigation and prevention, compliance management, and credit underwriting.
As Stripe put it in its submission, the opportunity and pace of change means regulatory intervention is inevitable given the complexities in the rapidly developing technology.