GoCardless said on 22 September that it had processed the UK's first agentic account-to-account payment: a donation to the anti-poverty charity Trussell, set up end to end through a conversation with an AI agent. The payment is small. What it shows is how regulators and payment networks are deciding what an AI agent may do with a customer's money, and this month's announcements put that line in different places.
The UK: the agent sets up the mandate, the payer approves it
According to GoCardless's announcement, a donor on its website talks to an AI agent about Trussell's work and picks a monthly gift of £5, £10 or £15. The agent then prompts the donor to enter bank details and sets up a Direct Debit mandate on their behalf. The payer stays in the loop at the point of commitment.
GoCardless built the checkout inside the Financial Conduct Authority's AI Live Testing programme. It is one of eight firms in the second cohort, alongside Barclays, Experian, Lloyds Banking Group (Scottish Widows) and UBS, among others. The FCA says testing for this cohort concludes by the end of 2026, with an evaluation report due in the first quarter of 2027.
What this changes: it is a live payment on a regulated rail under supervision, not a demo. It also runs on an existing mandate scheme rather than on a new rail built for agents, which keeps the novel part confined to the conversation layer.
India: NPCI keeps the agent away from authorisation
At the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai on 10 September, NPCI director Ajay Kumar Choudhary set out the operator's position in a keynote reported by Medianama: "AI may recommend, but authentication and final settlement must follow deterministic auditable rules." He described an architecture that separates intent, authorisation and settlement. The agent may read intent. Verifying identity, mandate, limits and consent sits with the authoriser.
Before the event, Inc42 reported that NPCI was preparing a Unified Agent Protocol to let AI agents make small UPI payments within pre-set limits, without approval on each transaction, building on the existing UPI Circle and Reserve Pay features. NPCI's public position at the fest was more cautious. Choudhary said the corporation "is also examining the protocols that may be required to identify and authorise digital agents" within UPI. We have not found a published NPCI specification for the protocol as of 24 September.
What NPCI did launch was tooling for building agents, not agents that pay. Business Standard reported two platforms: AiNxt, a bring-your-own-model platform for creating and deploying AI agents, and AtOM (Agentic Orchestration & Messaging), aimed at integration, partner onboarding and certification work across payment ecosystems.
The consumer features announced by RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra at the same event added controls rather than delegation. Per the NPCI release, MyUPI, a support tool built on NPCI's FiMI small language model, includes a Safety Switch that lets users request that UPI debit transactions be declined.
Private players are testing delegation inside user-set limits. Medianama's roundup of launches lists an agentic commerce stack from Pine Labs and L&T Finance on the PLANET app, where AI agents can complete a purchase within limits the user sets.
Card networks: agree on who the agent is first
On 9 September, Ant International, Mastercard and Visa said they would collaborate on know-your-agent (KYA) interoperability. Each already runs its own scheme: Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard's Verifiable Intent and Ant International's Agentic Mobile Protocol. The three will explore common principles for onboarding and identifying agents across networks, working through BuildFin.ai, the Monetary Authority of Singapore's AI initiative, according to Biometric Update.
The same initiative produced MAS's Safeguards for Agentic Finance at Runtime (SAFR) white paper, published on 3 July 2026. SAFR checks an agent's identity, the authority delegated to it, institutional controls and risk thresholds before an action goes through, and defines what is recorded at each decision. The paper includes use-case examples from Mastercard, Visa and Ant International.
What this changes: without a shared identity layer, each merchant and agent platform has to integrate separately with each network's scheme. The September announcement is a commitment to explore principles, not a finished standard, and no timeline was given in the coverage we reviewed.
Consumer demand is still unproven
Visa's Trust Index research, published this month, found that 72% of respondents had used an AI assistant, but only 23% of US consumers trust generative AI to handle payments on their behalf. This is a vendor survey from a company with a direct commercial interest in agentic commerce.
The finding is consistent with the design choices above. The GoCardless flow, NPCI's stated architecture and the SAFR framework each keep a human decision or a deterministic rule at the point where money moves.
What to watch
- FCA evaluation report, Q1 2027. It should show what the regulator concluded from supervising AI use cases, including agentic payments, in live conditions.
- An NPCI protocol specification. Whether NPCI publishes the Unified Agent Protocol, and whether it keeps authentication outside the agent as Choudhary described.
- Common KYA principles. The first output from Ant International, Mastercard and Visa, and whether other networks and wallets adopt it.
Sources
- GoCardless. "GoCardless Processes the First Agentic Account-to-Account Payment in the UK." 2026. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260922461642/en/GoCardless-Processes-the-First-Agentic-Account-to-Account-Payment-in-the-UK
- Financial Conduct Authority. "FCA announces second cohort for AI Live Testing." 2026. https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/fca-announces-second-cohort-ai-live-testing
- Medianama. "NPCI Says AI Shouldn't Approve UPI Payments at GFF 2026." 2026. https://www.medianama.com/2026/09/223-npci-ai-agents-upi-payments/
- Inc42. "NPCI To Launch Agentic Payments On UPI: Report." 2026. https://inc42.com/buzz/npci-to-launch-agentic-payments-on-upi-report/
- Business Standard. "NPCI launches two new agentic AI platforms: Key features explained." 2026. https://www.business-standard.com/finance/news/npci-launches-two-new-agentic-ai-platforms-key-features-explained-126091000346_1.html
- NPCI. "RBI Governor Unveils New UPI Capabilities at GFF 2026." 2026. https://www.npci.org.in/uploads/NPCI_Press_Release_RBI_Governor_Unveils_New_UPI_Capabilities_at_GFF_2026_AI_Powered_Customer_Support_and_Seamless_Tap_and_Pay_Experience_bb763a7670.pdf
- Medianama. "Top Products Launched at Global Fintech Fest 2026." 2026. https://www.medianama.com/2026/09/223-agentic-ai-products-fintechs-gff-2026/
- Ant International, Mastercard and Visa. "Ant International, Mastercard and Visa Initiate Collaboration on Know-Your-Agent Interoperability to Scale Agentic Commerce." 2026. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260909003891/en/Ant-International-Mastercard-and-Visa-Initiate-Collaboration-on-Know-Your-Agent-Interoperability-to-Scale-Agentic-Commerce
- Biometric Update. "Ant International, Visa, Mastercard work to make agentic protocols interoperable." 2026. https://www.biometricupdate.com/202609/ant-international-visa-mastercard-work-to-make-agentic-protocols-interoperable
- Monetary Authority of Singapore. "Safeguards for Agentic Finance at Runtime (SAFR)." 2026. https://www.mas.gov.sg/publications/monographs-or-information-paper/2026/safeguards-for-agentic-finance-at-runtime
- Visa. "New Visa Research Finds Consumer Trust is Accelerating the Path to Agentic Commerce." 2026. https://investor.visa.com/news/news-details/2026/New-Visa-Research-Finds-Consumer-Trust-is-Accelerating-the-Path-to-Agentic-Commerce/default.aspx