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      Jesse McWaters

      Jesse McWaters

      EVP, Head of Global Policy

      Mastercard

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      Jesse McWaters leads Mastercard’s global policy function, where he is responsible for directing the company’s policy strategy on a wide range of issues including digital assets, cross-border payments, real-time payments, open finance, digital ID, cyber-security, and fraud. Prior to joining Mastercard, Jesse served as Financial Technology & Innovation Lead at the World Economic Forum and as a financial services strategy consultant at Deloitte, supporting large-scale technology transformations and the roll-out of new business models for leading banks, insurers, and wealth managers.

      Speaking at SFF 2026

      • 3:30–4:00pmThu 19 NovPolicy StageHall 3, Singapore EXPOOpen

        Technology Rewiring

        Agentic Payments: Are Our Rails Ready?

        Policy StageHall 3, Singapore EXPOOpen

        About this session

        For decades, payment systems have been designed around human behaviour. AI agents could upend those assumptions. Unlike humans, agents do not care about rewards, interfaces or brand loyalty. They optimise for speed, cost, reliability and programmability. As agents begin making payments on behalf of users and businesses, they may transact at a scale and frequency never seen before — and they will do so without the friction, loyalty, and psychology that payment systems have long relied upon to manage risk and drive behaviour.
         
        This raises three questions. Can machines be trusted to make payments using our rails — and who is accountable when something goes wrong? Can agents genuinely serve users and merchants better than today's systems, or do they simply add a layer of opacity between people and their money? And what does the next generation of payment infrastructure need to look like to make agentic commerce safe, inclusive, and scalable? As PayNow Generation 2 considers capabilities relevant to agentic commerce, this session tackles all three.