AI in payments: efficiency now, strategic routing next

Finextra and Volante will host an online webinar to debate whether payment firms are using AI mainly for operational efficiency rather than as a strategic layer for routing and governance. The panel will include Nadish Lad, Global Head of Product and Strategic Business at Volante Technologies, and will be moderated by Teresa Connors, Contributing Editor at Finextra.

Organisers plan to review areas where AI has produced measurable results in payments. Industry work has shown AI can streamline back-office processes, reduce manual handling, improve exception management and strengthen fraud detection. These changes have cut costs and shortened processing times for routine tasks.

Speakers will examine how the payments landscape has expanded. New payment networks and rails, real-time schemes, stablecoins and central bank digital currencies have created more possible routes for moving money. The growing number of options makes selecting the most appropriate route for each transaction more complex.

The webinar will consider AI-driven payment orchestration as a response to that complexity. In principle, an orchestration layer could assess transaction value, currency, corridor, required speed, fees, available liquidity and risk to identify a preferred route in real time. Such systems would replace fixed routing rules and reduce the need for manual intervention, steering transactions across traditional banking infrastructure, real-time rails and digital-asset channels.

Greater use of AI for routing and automated decisions raises questions about accountability and oversight. The panel will address who is responsible when an AI-recommended route leads to loss, delay or compliance breaches, how firms can demonstrate transparency and explainability of decisions, and what controls are required as payment flows and rails change.

Discussion topics will include model validation procedures, audit trails, escalation paths for exceptions and contractual protections when third-party vendors supply AI-driven services. The session will also cover monitoring frameworks to track model performance as corridors and asset types evolve.

Organisers expect the webinar to weigh immediate operational benefits against possible longer-term shifts in payment architecture. One question for the panel is whether, over the next five years, AI will mainly increase efficiency in existing systems or change how value moves across different payment rails and asset classes.