The Pay Dirt

You can pay me now or you can pay me later. You can pay layaway, you can pay on credit, you can pay out of pocket, you can pay through the nose, you can pay an arm and a leg, you can pay dues, respects, dearly, heed, homage, lip service, compliments, cash on the barrelhead, the piper, peanuts, under the table, over the table, the ultimate price, or you can gladly pay me Tuesday. In the shadow of an election that was all about affordability, it seems like the last thing you need is a new way to pay. But agentic AI is here, and one of its supposedly excellent features is that it creates a new way to separate you from your money, and you don’t even have to be part of the process. You give the agent your credit card or banking info, and it will go out and manage transactions for you. That might sound like a big leap for consumers, but it’s a bigger leap for those on the receiving end of those payments (United Airlines is the latest company to ban AI agents), and an even bigger leap (and concern) for the industry that has been built over decades to manage those transactions. “Meta’s Muse, Instinct and other personal AI assistants have been empowered in recent weeks to make purchases on behalf of cardholders, marking new steps toward a potential future where consumers no longer need to initiate a purchase or press ‘buy’ at checkout. That is generating buzz and excitement about AI bots’ ability to create a new world order in payments. But inside banks and other payments companies and merchants, worries abound about the implications and whether bots will lead to elevated cases of fraud and returns, and open new legal risks. Early camps are already being formed.” WSJ (Gift Article): AI bots are using credit cards. Banks are racing to keep up. (alt link). “The systems that power payments today are built on byzantine rules, fraud protections, federal laws and network and bank fees that aren’t intended for robots. This ecosystem has long been in a state of constant tension between merchants, networks that set fees and rules, and card issuers that extend credit to consumers. Move one piece or change one fee even by a cent and the impact can quickly ripple into billions of dollars won and lost.” (I’d hold off on sharing your financial information with agents until things shake out and we know the systems are safe. There’s no need to turn your piggy bank into a guinea pig. You can pay me no mind, but excellent advice like this is why they pay me the big bucks.)