Lawmakers Test the Rules for AI Agents That Move Money

Artificial intelligence (AI) agents, stablecoins and tokenized securities put some of the mechanics of digital finance before lawmakers Wednesday (Sept. 2), including how software-driven transactions will be authorized and settled.

At a House Financial Services Committee hearing that ranged across tech-driven innovation’s role against a backdrop of financial regulation and economic policy, members of Congress questioned executives from Circle, the Florida Bankers Association and the New York Stock Exchange about how AI and blockchain technology are being incorporated into payments, banking and capital markets.

Circle President Heath Tarbert put the changes in infrastructure terms.

“We’re seeing the plumbing of the financial system change with digital assets,” he told lawmakers, describing the development of what Circle calls an “internet financial system.”

His testimony pushed the argument one step further.

“AI is the accelerator,” Tarbert said. “Software agents transact on behalf of people and businesses. They don’t stop for nights, weekends, or holidays. They need rails that are fast, programmable, and always on.”

Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., pressed Tarbert on what happens if stablecoins become one of the ways those agents pay.

Tarbert called a regulatory framework governing those events such as the GENIUS Act “absolutely critical.” Asked what might have happened without U.S. stablecoin rules, he identified two risks: AI agents could use offshore dollar stablecoins with weaker backing requirements, or another currency could gain ground as the unit used for machine payments.

Steil then got closer to the actual payment mechanism, asking whether more work is needed on “settlement triggers and smart contracts” that could govern transactions between AI agents and dollar stablecoins.

“Absolutely,” Tarbert replied, saying the industry is in the “early innings.”

Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., focused on the first control in the chain: establishing who is behind the software.

“When my agent starts talking to your agent, the very first question that it asks is: ‘Who the heck are you?’” Foster said, arguing that “agentic identity is crucial” and that there needs to be a legally traceable person behind an agent operating in finance.

That creates a substantial opening for banks and payment networks. Financial institutions already maintain verified customer identities, accounts, credentials, transaction histories and fraud controls. Payment networks already connect authenticated credentials to millions of merchants. Agentic commerce can therefore develop over existing accounts and card rails even if stablecoins provide another settlement option.

Kathleen Kraninger, president and CEO of the Florida Bankers Association, approached innovation from that regulated-bank infrastructure. Her testimony argued that banks need room to use technologies including AI for fraud detection, underwriting support, customer service and operational efficiency, while maintaining human accountability and controls appropriate to the risk of the application.

Smaller banks face a particular implementation problem. Applying large-bank validation and governance requirements to every limited AI application can make otherwise useful technology uneconomic for institutions that depend heavily on third-party technology providers. Kraninger argued for risk-based oversight rather than identical compliance infrastructure regardless of an institution’s size or the AI use case.

Kraninger argued that regulators should calibrate oversight to how banks are actually using the technology. “Community banks should not be expected to build large-bank validation infrastructure for limited, low-risk tools,” she told lawmakers.

Digital money creates a different competitive question for banks: where deposits sit before they move.

A consumer or company holding money in a stablecoin isn’t holding a commercial-bank deposit. Large-scale migration into stablecoins could therefore change the deposit funding available to banks, particularly if issuers or intermediaries can make stablecoins economically attractive substitutes for transaction accounts.

NYSE President Lynn Martin described another part of that architecture at the hearing. The exchange is developing a tokenized platform for trading and settling real-world assets.

“Our platform will directly link the digital equities to underlying shares,” Martin told lawmakers. “So the tokenized instrument and the traditional equity are not two separate products but a single security broadly accessible in two forms.”

Discussion of paying over time supplied a reminder that payment innovation is already changing how households fund transactions.

Ranking Member Maxine Waters, D-Calif., raised buy now, pay later (BNPL)  in her opening remarks, citing its use for grocery purchases. Federal Reserve data published in August showed that 20% of BNPL users used the product for groceries or food delivery in 2025, rising to 29% among users earning less than $50,000.

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) also came up in the discussion of digital money. Tarbert distinguished central bank digital currencies from tokenized deposits and payment stablecoins and noted that Congress has prohibited the Federal Reserve from issuing a retail CBDC. He argued that a retail CBDC could disintermediate community banks and, depending on its design, give the government greater visibility into consumers’ financial activity. Alex Pollock, senior fellow at the Mises Institute, also supported the prohibition at the hearing, arguing that a Fed-issued CBDC could expand the central bank’s role in allocating credit and create privacy risks.

Darrick Hamilton, an economics professor at The New School and chief economist at the AFL-CIO, supplied a different view of the technology push. With valuations high in AI and data technology, he told lawmakers, “now is especially not the time to lack prudent regulatory controls and consumer protections.”

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