CRM Shouldn't Be a Four-Letter Word
CRM was pitched as the brain of modern banking. Instead, it became a bloated filing cabinet that is expensive, unloved, overfed with bad data, and...
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1 min read
James White
:
10/10/25 11:21 AM
Google, Mastercard, PayPal, American Express, and Coinbase quietly changed the script last week. They rolled out the Agent Payments Protocol, which lets autonomous AI agents pay bills, move money, and shop on behalf of their human owners. Credit cards, stablecoins, and real-time bank transfers are all fair game.
That single announcement should feel louder than a fire alarm inside every financial institution.
For years, AI sat in the back office, detecting fraud, underwriting loans, and developing smarter marketing models. The Agent Payments Protocol moves it to the front of the house, not as a helper but as a spender.
Why It Matters
Picture a bot that compares mortgage rates, pulls credit, fills applications, and submits them before your member even finishes lunch. Imagine a treasury agent reallocating liquidity across accounts the moment yields shift. The mechanics are no longer theory. The rails now exist.
And they are not owned by banks or credit unions. They are owned by Big Tech, global networks, and crypto incumbents.
The Strategic Questions
This is not about whether AI will transact. It already can. The question is how your institution plans to stay relevant once it does.
Lessons from History
Think about how PayPal jumped from eBay novelty to household name in less than a decade. Or how Zelle swallowed P2P almost overnight. AI agents can move even faster. Why. Because once a consumer trains their agent to pay the bills or find the best loan, they never go back. The stickiness of automation is stronger than any loyalty program you can design.
What Leaders Should Do Now
AI just grew a wallet. Payments will not look like humans typing numbers into forms much longer. Machines will transact for humans, across networks, in real time. The only real question is whether your institution chooses to become the trusted facilitator of those transactions or sits idle while someone else collects the fees.
Would you trust an AI agent to shop for your next mortgage or move money across your accounts?
Reference Article:
https://www.investors.com/news/technology/google-stock-artificial-intelligence-agents-payments/
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With as much as 40% of an institution's Net Interest Income coming from payments, banks and credit unions cannot afford to get it wrong.