AI agents, stablecoins and the new rules of payment risk

Key takeaways

• AI agents, stablecoins, and instant rails are moving money faster, with fewer people involved in each payment.
• Faster payments move the most important risk decision earlier, before the money moves.
• GrailPay helps banks and fintechs confirm an account is real, open, and able to move money in real time so that they can approve more customers with confidence.

If you spend just an hour at Money20/20, you'll hear the word "instant" over and over. Instant payouts. Instant settlement. AI agents that can find, buy, and pay for things without anyone pressing a button.

For this year’s Money20/20, I was lucky to attend with April Mellas and Mallory Milestone from the GrailPay team. We made the most of it by spending time in the hallways, at side events, and around dinner tables, listening to others. 

Here are the main things that stood out to me.

The three themes that defined Money20/20 

AI agents are moving from demo to roadmap.

Last year, agentic commerce seemed like something from the future. This year, people were already discussing launch dates. The most interesting talks focused on permission and accountability—what an agent can buy, who it represents, and how the business receiving the payment knows it's valid.

Stablecoins are now being used as a treasury tool for business payments.

The discussion is now happening in treasury departments. Banks, payout platforms, and finance teams shared real examples, like paying suppliers faster, settling payments across borders, and moving money on weekends. Anchorage Digital's recent acquisition of Routable shows how quickly this is becoming part of daily business payments. Everyone I talked to agreed on one thing: with these systems, final really means final.

Bank and fintech partnerships are the path to scale.

Banks and fintechs discussed working together and the rules that help these partnerships succeed. Leaders want to move faster with partners their boards, regulators, and customers trust, so they are investing in the basics that make this possible.

How are instant payments changing payment risk?

All these themes point to the same idea. For years, bank payments had built-in delays. Payments took a day or two to settle, giving time to catch mistakes. If something went wrong, people could often reverse it, and someone was usually involved in the process.

Now, that extra time is being replaced by speed and the scale is huge. The ACH Network moved almost $50 trillion in the first half of 2026, and Same Day ACH grew by 29.5% in the second quarter to $1.3 trillion, according to Nacha. Over 1,800 banks and credit unions now use FedNow (Digital Transactions). Also, 42% of small businesses and 45% of mid-sized firms have already seen AI agents make purchases for their customers, according to Global Payments' latest research (Digital Transactions).

When money moves this quickly, the key decision happens sooner. Before sending a payment, someone needs to confirm the account is real, open, belongs to the right person, and can move money. If you get this right, speed becomes a benefit: faster onboarding, more approvals, and more room to grow. This is what we focus on every day at GrailPay.

How Grasshopper says yes to more startups with real-time account verification

One of my favorite examples is Grasshopper, a digital bank built for startups and small businesses. Founders who incorporated last month don't have much financial history, which made verifying the accounts they used to fund a new Grasshopper account slow and manual. Grasshopper wanted to say yes to more of those founders without lowering its standards.

Now, GrailPay checks those funding accounts in real time as clients sign up online. Grasshopper can now approve startups it would have turned away before, including companies bringing in $1 million to $7 million in deposits. Information that once took the risk team up to 30 minutes to gather now arrives instantly. As Luther Liang, Grasshopper's SVP and Head of Product, said: "We want to be able to say yes to as many small businesses and startups as we can." This is the kind of growth that faster payments should enable.

What's next for trust in faster payments

All the themes at Money20/20 pointed in the same direction. Money is moving faster, with fewer people involved in each payment, so the industry needs confidence built in from the start. These conversations will only become more common, and the need is already here.

We enjoyed meeting so many great people in Las Vegas and are excited by the demand we're seeing from banks, credit unions, fintechs, and platforms. With more partnerships launching soon, we're eager to keep growing and supporting the industry behind the scenes, where it matters most: making sure every payment goes to the right place and keeping people's money safe.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to talk with us. If we didn't get a chance to meet this week, feel free to reach out. I'd love to keep the conversation going.