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#17AI and paymentsPublished

Mandate.

Who is bound when the agent decides?

ThenewB drawing #17, “Mandate”. Today, a person consents to an €847 payment. Tomorrow, they give an AI agent a mandate defined by limit, scope and time, and the agent pays the same amount. Question: who is bound when the agent decides?

In ten seconds

The ECB opens a new phase of its digital euro innovation platform, including workshops on AI agents and their interactions.

The trigger

On 28 September 2026, the ECB opened a new wave of its digital euro innovation platform. The exploration track plans 2027 workshops on AI-enabled payments, AI agents and their interactions, and micropayments. The ECB does not commit to including these uses in a future digital euro.

The dominant reading

The topic is presented as a payment innovation: an agent buys on your behalf, faster and at lower cost.

The tension

The amount is identical, €847 in the drawing. The nature of the commitment changes. Consent given for each payment becomes a mandate given once, executed by a machine.

The analysis

Today, strong customer authentication ties each payment to a human decision. With an agent, the decision is delegated within a frame: a limit, a scope, a duration.

Who answers for a purchase that fits the mandate but not the intention? Who proves what the customer had authorised? The drawing leaves the question open. So does the legal framework.

What it changes

  • The mandate becomes something to design, trace and prove.
  • Fraud and compliance controls must tell the agent apart from the customer.
  • Customer trust rests on the mandate’s frame as much as on the interface.

Action points

  1. 01Define acceptable mandate parameters: limit, scope, duration, revocation.
  2. 02Keep usable evidence of the initial consent and of each execution.
  3. 03Follow the work of the ECB and national authorities before fixing a model.

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