Artificial intelligence (AI) agents will not take over the financial industry all at once. Instead, the technology will first handle simple, repetitive tasks with clear rules, before moving into more complex financial decisions and autonomous capital movement, according to a new report by the United Overseas Bank (UOB).

The report, released in October 2026, draws insights from eight respondents spanning the payments, infrastructure, and digital asset stack. They represent organizations including Bluwhale, Eigenteam, Kasu Finance, NetMind.AI, OKX, Polyhedra Network, Transak, and Velo Labs.

These experts explored the future of agentic finance and shared their views on the future of agentic AI in the finance sector, and why addressing identity, accountability, interoperability and governance issues will be critical for institutional adoption.

According to the experts, adoption of AI agents in the financial sector will follow a gradual and uneven path rather than a single industry-wide transformation. Over the next three years, they expect bounded autonomous finance to expand first in areas where outcomes are measurable, mandates can be tightly defined, and accountability is clear.

Machine-to-machine payments are widely seen as the leading area for near-term large-scale deployments of agentic finance. This is because payments for computing resources, data services, APIs and other digital inputs are highly structured, repetitive and governed by clearly defined rules, making them well suited to autonomous execution. These transactions also tend to involve lower risk and clearer transaction parameters than many retail financial activities.

Over time, many respondents expect these machine-native payments to become embedded within digital platforms and applications, operating largely in the background rather than as a visible payment category.

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