Agentic AI Needs Wider Adoption Before Consumers Use It For Payments, Experts Say

(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Agentic AI will still have to be more widely adopted before people trust it with financial transactions, industry experts said.

Samer Soliman, Group CEO of Arab Financial Services, said in a panel session that most people won't use AI for transactions unless it becomes more widely adopted. He added that agentic AI has already started to be adopted but the industry has yet to reach its maximum potential with it.

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“We will achieve it at a certain point once the trust is built between the agent and the consumer,” the CEO said. He was speaking at the fifth edition of the Banking Innovation & Technology Summit, a Khaleej Times event presented by airpay.

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Soliman explained that agents introduce a fourth party into the payment chain, alongside the customer, merchant and processor. A user might allow an agent to spend up to Dh500, for example, and the processor must then check that each payment matches those limits. Chargeback rules for such cases are still being developed, he said.

"We are used as a payment platform to monitor transactions coming from a customer. We are not used to monitor transactions coming from an agent," he said.

Only 39% trust AI for shopping

General manager of the MENA region at Checkout Remo Giovanni Abbondandolo, who was also speaking at the session with Soliman, said that when it comes to letting AI agents make decision on online shopping, only 39 per cent of surveyors for its data research said they want to be in control of the final transactions.

Payment is the last step of the shopping funnel, he noted. People use agents to search, compare prices and find products, but still want control when money changes hands.

“There is a big piece of safety and security that plays here,” he said.

UAE set to accelerate digital asset adoption

Also during the KT event, a senior HSBC Bank representative shared the findings of the bank's digital asset report.

The UAE is poised to accelerate its digital asset adoption, as its high participation score and favourable regulatory conditions are conducive to adoption, Aybek Islamov, Director of Emerging Market Banks Equity Research at HSBC Bank, said.

He explained that wealth correlates positively with institutional readiness for digital asset adoption, which means a high-income profile country like the UAE is more prepared for faster adoption.

UAE banks such as First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB), Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB), and Emirates NBD are positioned to win due to digital asset adoption, while Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB) and Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB) are classified as“first mover risk.”

Some GCC banks' technology capital expenditure (Tech CapEx), the money used for buildings, machinery, or technology, stayed in a tight range of 2 – 2.5 per cent since 2020, although core revenue to technology assets fell 16.7 times in 2025, according to the HSBC report.

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