AI in payments: Efficiency now, orchestration later

Finextra and Volante will host a webinar that examines how artificial intelligence is being used across payments to reduce manual work and detect fraud, and whether firms should shift from using AI for efficiency to using it to reshape payment routing and settlement. The organisers have not disclosed a date or time. Financial institutions currently apply AI to streamline operations, cut manual intervention, improve exception handling and strengthen fraud detection. The webinar will bring together industry experts to compare those immediate operational gains with the potential for AI to influence payment routing and settlement decisions. Payments now move across a growing set of networks and instruments, including traditional bank rails, real-time payment schemes, stablecoins and emerging digital currencies. That expansion creates multiple possible routes for a single transaction. Manual routing requires evaluation of transaction value, currency, corridor, settlement speed, cost, liquidity and risk. Webinar organisers say AI could enable dynamic payment orchestration by assessing these factors and selecting routes in real time. The panel will examine accountability and governance when AI recommends a route that leads to loss, delay or a compliance breach. Discussions will cover who holds responsibility for AI-driven decisions and what oversight, transparency and audit trails firms need to show. Regulatory expectations will also be a topic. Supervisors and compliance teams are increasingly focused on model explainability, risk controls and documentation. Participants will discuss how organisations can develop and document controls that allow decisions to be reviewed and justified. The webinar will address practical implementation issues such as integrating AI into existing payment systems, the data required for accurate route selection, and model testing under different market conditions. Speakers will also consider the trade-offs between using third-party AI providers and building in-house capabilities, and the role of standards and industry collaboration in enabling interoperability. Speakers include Nadish Lad, Global Head of Product and Strategic Business at Volante Technologies; Teresa Connors of Finextra will moderate. The panel will review both short-term operational benefits and potential longer-term effects on transaction routing patterns, cost structures and liquidity management for banks and corporates.