The Federal Reserve is holding a conference in October focused on payment system improvements.
The conference, scheduled for Oct. 21, will explore several aspects of payments innovation, including the intersection of traditional and decentralized finance and the convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and payments, the central bank announced Wednesday (Sept. 3).
“Innovation has been a constant in payments to meet the changing needs of consumers and businesses,” Fed Governor Christopher Waller said in a news release, adding that he hopes the conference would include input from companies that want to help shape the future of payments.
Other topics to be covered include emerging stablecoin use cases and business models and the tokenization of financial products and services.
PYMNTS has written extensively on the convergence of AI, crypto and stablecoins. For example, we spoke in June with Coupa Product Strategy and Management Senior Vice President Rajiv Ramachandran about the embrace of agentic AI among B2B firms.
“I think we’re standing at the edge of a major transformation,” Ramachandran said during a conversation for the June “What’s Next in Payments: Secret Agents” series. “Agentic AI is not just a technological trend — it’s a rethinking of how decision-making, risk and value creation happen inside financial workflows.”
Although the term “agentic AI” might sound futuristic or like something out of a Cold War spy thriller, Ramachandran told PYMNTS he views it as a pragmatic solution to an old business imperative, that of doing more, faster and more securely, with reduced human overhead.
“It’s not just about automation; it’s about delegation,” he said.
And in the aftermath of the GENIUS Act’s passage, PYMNTS wrote that stablecoins could change how global companies access, store and move dollars, particularly in places where trust is lacking and banking is broken.
Currency.com Chief Executive Konstantin Anissimov told PYMNTS in an interview in May that there has been “a big shift in terms of adoption of stablecoin payments that is being driven by uncertainty in geopolitics.”
“I am personally seeing a big increase of small to medium enterprises utilizing stablecoin payments because banking rails are harder and harder to use,” Anissimov said.
The report uses the example of a mid-size exporter in the Philippines purchasing electronics components from Taiwan and selling to distributors in Kenya, a deal that involves three currencies, two central banks and at least four intermediaries.
“Enter stablecoins,” PYMNTS wrote. “Instead of routing through correspondent banks or relying on volatile forex pairs, companies can denominate invoices in stablecoins, settle within hours and avoid the friction of legacy payment rails.”