Financial institutions aren’t short of intelligence. They are short of agents they will let act. Running AI agents in regulated finance requires bounded permissions, traceable actions and defensible outcomes. The challenge is no longer just what AI can do, but how institutions can govern what it does and prove it.

While Western payment giants race to crack Asia's fragmented markets, the region's homegrown fintechs have quietly gone the other way, expanding into Europe and the US. A moderated conversation with two cross-border payments leaders explores what mastering Asia's complexity has taught them about winning on the global stage.

AI agents will not only serve customers and execute payments. They will also be used to impersonate customers, automate fraud and probe financial infrastructure at unprecedented speed. Traditional controls built around human behaviour and manual intervention may no longer respond fast enough. This session examines how financial institutions can deploy autonomous defence, distinguish legitimate agents from malicious ones and contain threats without blocking genuine transactions.