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Take your brand to new heights with in flight advertising powered by Viasat ads. High engagement formats, targeted delivery and self service tracking. Make it simple. Reach millions of travelers across leading airlines in a premium captive environment. Join their journey with viasat ads. Hello everyone and welcome to the banking and payment show, an eMarketer podcast brought to you by Viasat Ads. Today is December 30, 2025. I'm Rob Rubin, head of eMarketer Advisory and your host. Today we're talking about two trends to watch in 2026. Consumers use of agentic AI in their financial lives and the development of stablecoin payment rails becoming bank grade in 2026. This will be a lot to unpack, so. So I've asked eMarketer senior analysts Myra Thomas and Grace Broadbent to join me. Hey Myra, I think this is your first podcast. In fact, I know it's your first podcast.
B
It absolutely is. I'm looking forward to it.
A
I'm really excited to have you on. We've been trying to get you on.
B
Since you joined, so I appreciate it. Thanks very much.
A
Happy to have you. And Grace, you're a regular, so always happy to have you on.
C
Always happy to be here and excited to be with Myra here today.
A
I've built a little on topic icebreaker. So before we jump into agentic, AI and stablecoins, I want to get a sense of how you two actually feel about automation in your own financial lives. We're going to play a quick game which I'm calling delegate or don't you dare.
C
I love it.
A
I'll name a money chore and you can tell me if you would delegate it to an AI agent or don't you dare meaning no way it stays human only. Grace, you can start negotiating your Internet or phone bill every year.
C
Delegate.
B
Delegate.
A
Delegate. Yeah. Automatically moving extra cash from your checking into savings or investment at the end of each week.
C
Don't you dare.
B
Yeah, have to agree. Don't you dare.
A
All right, there we go.
C
Could maybe put terms on it, but not. Not fully take over.
A
Put rails on that one.
B
There you go. Makes sense, right?
A
Canceling subscriptions you don't use without asking you every time.
C
Delegate.
B
Delegate for sure, 100%.
A
Choosing which payment rail to use behind the scenes. A card, an ach, maybe a stablecoin Delegate.
B
Yeah, I think she's right. I think Delegate as well.
A
All right. I think that this has been interesting because I think it shows that there is some tension with the topic already today about what you, you know, the things that you would delegate are likely things you're not actually doing today.
C
Yeah. And things we don't know about, like people don't know if it's on the card rail or an ACH rail, things.
A
That you know about. But like when it was talking about moving money, which you do, that was no way. So I think we've quickly discovered the rub is the things that you have no idea how to do you might be willing to let them do if it didn't cost a lot or if there wasn't a lot of risk.
C
Investments and savings are always a touchy subject.
B
Yeah, exactly.
A
That is a really good big picture into this. And in headlines I pick an article or a report related to the topic and we discuss. So today I picked our banking trends to watch in 2026 report that you both worked on. So let's jump right in. The report highlights that about 70% of banks are already using agentic AI in some capacity. So from your perspective, what does that actually mean for consumers right now?
B
I think anything that has to do with a financial decision or anything that is dealing with financial stress will ultimately not be dealt with by agentic AI. So today we're really just talking mostly about behind the scenes and that's where it pretty much stands for the moment.
C
Yeah, I agree. A lot of what we're talking about today is going to be very like experimental phases. Things are maybe in pilots but things aren't really. The full agentix solutions aren't really from in front of consumers right now. It's more back end stuff, internal operations for bank employees and things like that and then experimenting with the consumer facing stuff.
A
Are there any experiments that seem interesting? Do we have they published any or any that have been talked about?
C
As a payments person, I will give a payments example that some banks are doing. Citi and US bank partnered with mastercard's agentic payments technology. They're the first two banks to implement it and and basically it just allows these cardholders to easily link their credit and debit cards to AI agents.
A
All right.
B
Yeah, I think that's probably one of the bigger ones that I would mention as well. I think for the moment though we're still waiting to see some major pilot happen. I think the biggest issue remains around ways to standardize data and interoperability. So I think mostly you know, the transactions and what we will see will come further down the road.
A
All right. You know one stat that jumped out at me in the report was that 34% of consumers say they don't want their bank using AI at all. Like what do you read into that?
B
You know I think mostly consumers are fickle lot and they're also suspicious and they're always going to wonder if they're going to get the best deal. They're worried about transparency of transactions and of course data security and privacy. And those are always going to be the things that are going to have to be dealt with upfront in order to make the consumer feel much more comfortable with any sort of AI transaction.
C
I also think there's a consumer education issue. Banks have been using AI for at least a decade. Decades, right?
A
Machine learning.
C
Yeah, machine learning has always been around. It's now getting into the gen AI and gentic AI and all these AI headlines are starting to scare consumers of like AI taking over AI managing my money without a say. But like what's banks are actually doing right now is none of that like quote scary stuff. They're just using it to streamline operations, to streamline consumers operations and things like that. And so I think there's draw detection. AI is. Yeah, we have. Fraud would be way more plentiful than it is right now if all banks were not using AI based fraud protection and things like that. So I think it's really about consumer education of what AI is doing and showing that it's all about the small steps right now that are eventually going to lead into greater automation.
A
I wonder if AI agents acceptance is going to be built into the. I'm just thinking off of my head right now but if AI agents are going to be built into a use case as opposed to changing a behavior. So a use case like a tool that comes out which is AI agent driven to cancel your subscriptions. So it's sort of use case oriented around what it can do and it can help you in that regard. Would that be the way AI agents come or is somebody going to say hey I'm Sally, your new AI agent and I can do all these things for you.
C
I think it has to start with those smaller steps and like give consumers like a real incentive to use it. Like again the subscription is a great example. Like everyone hates duplicate subscriptions or ones they don't even know they have. And like building in those smaller steps is really a good way to grow trust. Build trust, grow consumer awareness of what this actually means and what it doesn't mean in that my data is protected and things like that. And then banks can go to the fully automated agents that take over bigger tasks.
B
I think consumers develop certain habits too when it comes to financial transactions. I mean if you look at mobile wallets, for instance, it took a while for that technology to even take traction. And it was really a tipping point with the pandemic that really got people to think about using it. And even after that, there had to be additional enabling technology that allowed it to truly be functional, whether it was near field communication or whatever else. I mean, we're still talking about super apps at this point and we haven't really gotten there. So it's really hard to say. Exactly.
A
I mean I would argue that in other parts of the world we have gotten to super apps.
B
We have, we have. But I think the use of cell phones and most of those countries started with digital technology. They were reliant on phones to begin with. And so they developed around that and we're sort of going the other way, if that makes any sense.
A
So you mean they were developed around a digital infrastructure?
B
Exactly.
A
In the pots. Plain old telephone.
B
Exactly, exactly.
C
They kind of skipped the cards.
B
We skipped the cards.
C
But yeah, I think it's all about like much more eloquent. No, I think it's like all about consumer like incentive. They need an incentive to make a big behavioral switch.
B
Behavioral switch, absolutely.
A
A good time to transition from that sort of talking about agentic AI to stablecoin payment. Rails. Because the report also says stablecoins are moving from policy to product and could become quote, bank grade infrastructure for grace. What makes 2026 the turning point for.
C
This 2025 really we saw really strong momentum in terms of growing stablecoin support, adoption acceptance and that really started because of regulatory movement. The Trump administration really put their full support behind stablecoins even though legislation and regulation still getting worked out.
A
Did you know that they have their own stable coins, Trump coins and everything? Melania, I wonder if that was related. I don't know. Just asking.
C
Well, I don't know if we want.
A
To get into the same questions, the.
C
Ethics of all that. But you know, it did help, it did help stablecoins get, you know, that long term publicity, you know, long term kind of support. But really it's. The regulation was the turning point in 2025. But really what's changing in 2026 is that banks are getting more involved. It's moving kind of from fintech experimentation to really the legacy financial institutions are starting to really dive into stablecoins, grow their acceptance.
A
How does that drive with the, like the retailers, stablecoins, Starbucks.
C
We love the Starbucks example. It's still being worked out. I mean right now it's like we think of Starbucks and I would predict Amazon and Walmart.
A
Dunkin Doe.
C
Yeah, Dunkin Doe. We love the names. I don't have a clever ones for Amazon or Walmart. But like I do predict personally that they're going to come up with their own stablecoins.
A
But are they going to compete with banks for stablecoin dollars?
C
Yes and no. They're trying to. Walmart specifically is really trying to build out its own financial services ecosystem. So that would be kind of contained. But I think this just speaks to a bigger picture of stablecoins are still very early in growth and there's still a lot of hurdles that need to be overcome. There's still still a lot of issues of what will be the dominant stablecoin. Will banks work together, how will they work together, et cetera.
A
One line that I loved in the report, banks will begin linking stablecoins to loyalty ecosystems, yield bearing accounts and automated contracts. So this sort of gets into programmable money. So how transformative is programmable money? Really?
C
Stablecoins are essentially smart money. You know, they can inherently listen for data and respond to that data the way they are programmed on the blockchain. I think it's easier to give examples than to explain it in higher theory. So for example, if you're making a payment, your money won't move out of your account until the package is delivered to your door. Like it will know inherently not to move money until something's delivered. Or for example you're paying rent, it will keep all your money in your savings account until the second you have to pay rent. It will move your money out of your account, give it to your landlord so it's always making interest and just like little decisions like that, it will make smarter decisions with your money. Overall stablecoins can really listen to data. Whatever the program, whatever the rule is you want it to be, whether it's a loyalty program saying use this loyalty money here, don't use my credit card here or use my debit card here and not buy now, pay later or whatever it might be. I can make those decisions for you.
A
I have a real life Dunkin Donuts example.
C
Let's hear it.
A
Okay, my brother in law loves Dunkin Donuts and he goes to Dunkin Donuts all the time like on his way to work. So he's got a lot of Dunkin Donuts loyalty points. If he had a Dunkin Donuts stablecoin when he went to pay, it could figure out when his loyalty points were expiring and use his loyalty points and balance them. Whereas now he's in a scenario where his loyalty points are all going to expire. And if you're near him when you're at Dunkin Donuts, you're getting a free coffee because he's got to burn all of.
B
He might be too agitated with the caffeine to think about it.
C
There's ways to like the consumer benefits, but there's also ways for brands to kind of like benefit off of it and set their own rules. For example, they can say, like your $1 of Dunkin Donuts points will be worth $2 if you use it by Friday to like encourage higher spend that week. Or, you know, it will be worth $10 if you hold on to it for a month to just like encourage higher retention over time. Like, there's ways.
A
I can see CFOs getting rashy right now. Wait, what? You can control those rules? I know they looked, they had all this money in their unaccrued revenue pile and now they don't.
C
Yeah, and that's. Yeah, you got to balance the economics with it because they love the unused points and things like that.
A
This is a great time to move to our next segment because we talked about AI agents and we talked about stablecoin Rails. So to me, the next obvious question is, do these trends converge? So our last segment, we're going to kick off a friendly debate. And in the debate, I've asked you guys already to take opposing positions which are not necessarily your positions, but we're using them as a way of, of teasing out some of the points. We're going to. We're going to do two rounds and they each. You each get up to a minute. You don't need to take the minute if you just nail it in the first 10 seconds. And then as usual, I'm the jud. So Grace, you're going to take the position that AI agents will naturally use stablecoin Rails because they are programmable, instant and built for automation. And Myra's position is that AI agents will rise regardless of which Rails they use because consumers care about outcomes, not the underlying settlement system. So round one is going to be about infrastructure versus consumer behavior. And Grace, you're going to go first to make your case. Why do you believe AI driven financial automation pushes banks and fintechs towards stablecoin Rails?
C
I would argue AI agents and the traditional banking system don't seamlessly work together. For example, AI works 24, 7 and can make decisions in milliseconds. The banking system, for the most part, 9 to 5, takes holidays off weekends, batch payments takes days to settle, whereas stablecoins are real time 24,7 can be used anytime and stablecoins can keep up with the pace of AI. Additionally, another issue that comes up is micropayments. AI agents often need to buy like tiny slices of data or services like $0.01 to access a specific API or to $0.05 to read a newspaper article or something like that. And you really can't make those micropayments with credit cards or bank transfers with the fixed fees and things like that. But stablecoins allow for these micropayments and they allow for these micropayments to be done in an efficient manner where it doesn't cost triple the amount to access an API.
A
All right, that was good in your minute, I'm going to say that. Maya, thank you. You have to now respond. Why do you believe AI doesn't need new Rails to take off with consumers?
B
I think for the consumer the lack of transparency is an issue, but as things develop, they will develop. And it doesn't necessarily mean that AI has to be a part of all of this. Right. And so transactions are happening for the most part every day and most consumers are more than happy with the way things are right now. I can't necessarily see a world where AI is necessarily going to make their transactions that much better that will push the needle in order to make this a standard.
A
But are we thinking about transactions that exist today and now we're just using a different method to process them? Because like Grace, you were talking about transactions which aren't possible today, those micro payments. So I wonder like, how are you going to put micro payments on the current Rails if that's like becomes a use case?
B
That is a very.
C
Thank you. Rob, you're doing my rebuttal for me.
B
I think he is. I think he is. That's a great point actually. I must agree on that moment.
C
Yeah, it's. We're really talking about like payments, as you said, that don't exist and there's things that are going to need to keep payments have to keep up with the pace of AI technology.
A
I think it was fixed against you, Myra, but I'm giving, I'm giving Grace Ram one a win to win. Take the win 100%. But I'm going to tell you that everybody's a winner.
B
That's good to know. I'll get a participation and we get.
A
A trophy and we get.
B
And there's a round two participation trophy.
A
There's a round two and you go first. So if Consumers already hesitate to let banks use AI at all. Would a new payment rail make that easier or harder?
B
I guess it really matters on how you interpret that. I think the education process of trying to tell consumers how payment rails work in the first place, are they really going to understand that?
A
Do they even know what that means?
B
Do they know what that means?
C
I will say they don't know.
B
No, they don't. No, they don't. But I think they do know about what this AI is. And if they understand that transactions are being processed differently, will there be some fear about this AI in the background? Possibly. While it might make their transactions easier, would they hesitate to use it? I think that's a possibility. I think once again what Grace said, it's more about education than anything else. But how do you explain how transactions take place behind the scenes and the transparency of that transaction? When you might be talking about an agentic transaction and picking a particular payment for the consumer? That might be a much more complicated thing to explain and it might make it much harder for them to want to be a participant in that transaction.
A
Okay, if AI agents are going to automate multi step financial tasks like paying bills, moving money, managing subscriptions, why are stablecoin Rails better suited for that Automation?
C
Because stablecoins are essentially code already. They are variables in the smart contract and so an AI agent can treat them exactly like they would treat any other data they're given. The logja can be built directly into the transfer. It goes back to a lot of the examples I give. Like it won't release the money until the good or service is, you know, at your door.
A
Until Amazon takes the picture of it sitting at your.
C
I would like it to be inside my door rather than the picture because I've gotten a lot of stolen packages on my door. But yes, and it builds in the logic and even more complicated things than that of like if this happens and it can get delivered on time, make the payment, but if it can't get delivered on time, cancel it and refund it automatically or.
B
But I would debate that because at some point, what is agentic? If we're setting up these many parameters, where does the parameter stop in order to say, okay, I want to buy a pair of shoes, they have to be blue. You can only use this particular card. How many parameters will the consumer actually need in order to make a transaction truly autonomous?
A
I think we always pick the example of choosing like shopping for something of personal choice, of course. But I think what we're talking about are efficiency tasks.
B
Sure.
A
Like Canceling subscriptions, Everybody doesn't. Nobody wants to have subscriptions that they don't use. But the idea of figuring out how to do that yourself is complicated. If there was an agent that could figure it out for you, there's no friction there.
B
What do you see Grace as like the easiest transaction that consumers might be willing to make?
C
That step in addition to subscriptions? I think early examples could be bill pay of like not making the payment until your paycheck comes in and then automatically added maybe $200 to the savings account and $100 to the savings account or things like that. I think it's all about like smaller decisions now before it, you know, gets larger.
A
We're at a really good place and I want to, I want to end by, by asking you each to come up with like one sentence. And my question is, what's the biggest things banks should keep in mind as AI agents and next gen payment rails.
C
Evolve together, AI agents will transform the financial ecosystem. So if the banking system can't offer money that moves at the same speed of AI agents will simply bypass banks entirely.
B
All right, I think that's a great jumping off point. I made that sort of point in one of my reports as well. Banks need to figure out their place in this new ecosystem while fintechs and big tech is really sort of circumventing their place in the agentic world.
A
It's been happening for a long time, right? They've been getting disintermediated out of everything for years and they've been trying to find ways to. To stay involved with consumers.
C
But I will say it's not all this is not bad news for banks. Banks are not going anywhere. They're not getting fully disintermediated. It's still like so early in this journey that there's still plenty of time for banks to get started on their AI plans and things like that.
A
We have to wrap this up. I want you guys. Thank you so much for coming today. I've had, I've had a real blast on this topic.
B
It was a pleasure.
C
Yeah, it was great. We could talk for another hour.
A
I know. And thanks everyone for listening to the Banking and payment show and eMarketer PODC brought to you by Viasat Ads. Thank you to our studio team that puts these episodes together. Our next episode is on January 20th, so be sure to check it out. See you then.
Date: December 30, 2025
Host: Rob Rubin (EMARKETER Head of Advisory)
Guests: Myra Thomas (Senior Analyst, eMarketer), Grace Broadbent (Senior Analyst, eMarketer)
This episode explores two transformative trends for 2026 in banking and payments:
Rob Rubin leads an insightful conversation with analysts Myra Thomas and Grace Broadbent, examining how AI-powered agents are creeping into daily banking and whether stablecoin-backed, programmable money will upend the foundations of how we pay and get paid.
“The things that you would delegate are likely things you're not actually doing today.”
— Rob Rubin (02:36)
“Banks have been using AI for at least decades, right? ... Fraud would be way more plentiful than it is right now if all banks were not using AI-based fraud protection.”
— Grace Broadbent (06:07)
“They can say, like, your $1 of Dunkin’ Donuts points will be worth $2 if you use it by Friday ... or $10 if you hold on to it for a month to encourage retention.”
— Grace Broadbent (14:21)
“AI works 24/7 and can make decisions in milliseconds. The banking system...takes holidays off, weekends, batch payments...Stablecoins can keep up with the pace of AI.”
— Grace Broadbent (16:20)
“Most consumers are more than happy with the way things are right now.”
— Myra Thomas (17:37)
Myra:
“Do they [consumers] even know what that means? … No, they don't.”
— Myra Thomas (19:39)
Grace:
“Stablecoins are essentially code already. ... The logic can be built directly into the transfer.”
— Grace Broadbent (20:49)
Rob’s insight:
“Consumers are fickle lot and they're also suspicious and they're always going to wonder if they're going to get the best deal.”
— Myra Thomas (05:30)
“It has to start with those smaller steps and give consumers a real incentive to use it...building in those smaller steps is really a good way to grow trust.”
— Grace Broadbent (07:40)
“They love the unused points and things like that.”
— Rob Rubin (14:48)
“If the banking system can't offer money that moves at the same speed, AI agents will simply bypass banks entirely.”
— Grace Broadbent (23:12)
“Banks need to figure out their place in this new ecosystem while fintechs and big tech is really sort of circumventing their place in the agentic world.”
— Myra Thomas (23:26)
This episode delivers a lively, optimistic-yet-cautious look at how AI agents and stablecoin-enabled, programmable money are transforming banking. The experts agree: user education, transparency, and incremental, high-value use cases are critical for trust and mass adoption. Banks that fail to keep up with the speed of programmable AI money risk being left behind — but it’s not too late for smart, strategic investment and consumer-centric design.