# Session 8 — Economies of Machines: Tokenization for Agentic Autonomous Finance

**Format:** Panel
**Event:** Payments Canada Summit 2026

### Panel Members

- **Michelle Beyo** — Finavator *(Moderator)*
- **Aviva Klein** — Independent Consultant
- **Nate Soffio** — Prove
- **David Tax** — TD Bank Group
- **Mike Ward** — Mica

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## Agentic Finance Takes Shape — But Trust, Identity, and Control Remain Unresolved

At this year's Payments Canada Summit, a panel of industry leaders — moderated by **Michelle Beyo of Finavator** — gathered to unpack one of the most rapidly evolving topics in financial services: agentic autonomous finance. Beyo framed the space as one moving at extraordinary speed — *"in the last six weeks alone, the amount of updates and news across the ecosystem… there's just so much to take in"* — and set the panel up to separate what is real from what remains aspirational.

The central tension was clear from the outset: while the potential is enormous, the foundational elements required to make agent-driven commerce safe, trusted, and scalable are still being built.

## A System Moving Faster Than Its Foundations

**Nate Soffio of Prove**, working at the intersection of identity and standards, pointed to an unusual signal of momentum: **"contributors to the standards bodies and working groups are moving way faster than I've seen them move before."** He noted that collaboration is now happening across payment rails, identity providers, and internet infrastructure companies, adding that *"we can't just kind of transpose one-to-one human frameworks for trust onto agents."*

Yet, as **Aviva Klein, Independent Consultant**, observed, real-world adoption remains limited. *"I'm not seeing a lot, that's for sure,"* she said, noting that most activity today is concentrated in enterprise workflows, particularly in the **"procure-to-pay cycle,"** where agents are automating processes rather than executing fully autonomous consumer transactions.

From a banking perspective, **David Tax of TD Bank Group** reinforced that the industry is not yet ready to scale. **"We're still in a 'not yet,'"** he said. **"Trust is hard to gain and easily lost… that experience is going to be too uneven for people to really scale yet."**

## Trust Begins With Simplicity — But Breaks Quickly

Despite this caution, early experimentation is already exposing real-world challenges. Tax shared an internal example: **"one of our executives… said to herself, 'I'm going to buy a case of cold-pressed juice.' And 10 cases showed up at her door."** The takeaway, he explained, is that *"the challenges are not theoretical. The challenges are real."*

**Mike Ward of Mica**, approaching the problem from an infrastructure perspective, expects adoption to begin with low-risk use cases. **"I'm probably not going to give it a permission for a $5,000 summer vacation,"** he said, **"but to make sure that there's toilet paper on the front doorstep tomorrow morning… I believe that type of transaction will start happening quite quickly."**

This gradual adoption path was echoed across the panel: agentic commerce will start with tightly defined, low-risk actions before expanding into broader, more autonomous decision-making.

## Identity: The Missing Piece in Every Protocol

While payment rails and agent capabilities continue to evolve, **Soffio** identified a fundamental gap: identity. Referring to emerging frameworks like Visa TAP and Mastercard's verifiable intent initiatives, he noted that **"they all kind of have an identity-shaped hole."**

The challenge, he explained, is not just verifying a user, but binding that identity to an agent and its actions. **"How do we… cryptographically bind an identity to a specific agent or agent runtime or a specific task or a specific chain of events?"**

This introduces a deeper architectural shift. In agent-driven interactions, he argued, traditional assumptions no longer hold. **"Everyone's got to authenticate with everyone else. It's just a big authentication party,"** he said, reflecting a world where multiple intermediaries — agents, platforms, and merchants — interact simultaneously.

## Consent Is No Longer a One-Time Event

If identity is unresolved, consent is even more complex. **Klein** emphasized that existing models are insufficient for autonomous systems. **"Consent is going to be super important and not just one time, but continuously throughout the mandate of the agent,"** she said.

The risk lies in how agents operate. *"Agents… just want to please us… and they will uncover every single stone in order to please its user."* Over time, this can lead to drift, where *"what you consented for originally is actually not necessarily what the agent is even doing anymore."*

To manage this, she pointed to the need for new control mechanisms: **"the audit trail is going to be super, super important… not just what, but why did the agent do it."** She also highlighted revocability and human intervention, noting that "the ability for the human to stop" and "having the human in the loop" will remain critical as mandates expand.

## Payments: Evolution, Not Replacement

On the question of payment methods, the panel agreed that existing rails will not disappear overnight. **Tax** explained that *"existing rails are largely going to persist,"* with card networks adapting their existing trust frameworks to this new environment.

At the same time, new models are emerging. *"Tokenized deposits… stablecoins… the pieces are coming together,"* he said, particularly for use cases like micropayments. However, he raised a deeper question: **"does the programmability matter as much if the agents themselves can be the programmer?"**

This shift suggests that agents may become the primary layer of logic, while payment systems focus on speed, cost, and settlement.

## Who Do Users Actually Trust?

One of the most debated questions was who will ultimately own the relationship with the user. **Beyo**, moderating, raised a concern shared by many: *"I don't know that I trust the LLM to be my agent… what trust have they built with me so far?"*

**Soffio** responded by reframing the concept entirely. **"It may be easier to think about an agent as sort of a container for stuff,"** he said, rather than a trusted entity in itself.

**Tax**, meanwhile, pointed to user behaviour. **"Where trust starts to go for the average person… is a brand that they've heard of,"** he said, noting that familiarity may drive early adoption. Over time, however, *"what makes it work better is going to be who knows you the best."*

He also raised the possibility of a more decentralized future, where users carry their own data. Referencing earlier ideas about data ownership, he suggested that *"you actually do have your data… and… you should be able to bring all of that context with you to that other provider."*

## Merchants Face a New Visibility Problem

From the merchant perspective, a new issue is emerging: visibility. As **Tax** explained, **"merchants have no easy way to detect"** whether a transaction is initiated by a human or an agent.

Without that clarity, defensive behaviour is likely. *"You're going to put those blocks in place,"* he said, particularly if agent-driven traffic appears risky or low quality.

This creates a need for new identity signals within transactions, ensuring that *"this is real traffic that looks well."* In the absence of such signals, friction may increase rather than decrease.

## Banks as the Potential Trust Anchor

**Ward** argued that traditional financial institutions still have a critical role to play. *"If something was not right… who would I call?"* he asked. He pointed out that the entity the consumer trusts most is *"their financial institution."* As a result, he believes banks should take a more active role in agentic systems, particularly in authorization, monitoring, and dispute handling.

## Canada's Opportunity — and Constraint

The discussion also turned to Canada's position in this emerging landscape. While the country lacks a dominant LLM ecosystem, panelists saw structural advantages.

**Klein** argued that **"I don't think Canada needs its own LLM,"** emphasizing instead the importance of privacy and safe data handling. **Tax** added that Canadian privacy laws are relatively strong, though he warned of the risk of *"privacy compliance hell"* if those frameworks are not adapted to agent-driven interactions.

**Ward**, by contrast, highlighted Canada's more concentrated financial ecosystem as a potential advantage. **"Your ability to get good standards… tested and controlled… is not like a lot of places,"** he said.

## The Real Challenge Ahead

In his closing remarks, **Tax** offered a perspective that resonated across the discussion. **"AI is the easy part,"** he said. The real challenge lies in building the systems around it — the controls, governance, and infrastructure required to support a world of autonomous agents.

He also warned that the industry may be underestimating what lies ahead. **"We're not ready for the volume and speed with which things are going to go,"** he said, adding that *"we are underestimating the amount of controls we need to put into place."*

## Conclusion

The panel made one thing clear: agentic autonomous finance is no longer theoretical. Early use cases are emerging, and the pace of innovation is accelerating rapidly. Yet the foundational layers — identity, consent, trust, and control — remain unresolved.

As **Beyo** concluded, the path forward will require coordination across the entire ecosystem. *"We all need to work together to get there properly,"* she said, *"to ensure consumers are protected and getting the innovation part of this whole ecosystem play."*

The opportunity is significant — but so is the complexity.

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## Key Takeaways

- Standards bodies are moving faster than ever — but real-world adoption is mostly enterprise procure-to-pay.
- The "cold-pressed juice" anecdote: an executive asked for one case, **10 cases showed up.** Failure modes are real.
- Adoption will start with low-stakes recurring purchases (toilet paper), not $5,000 vacations.
- Every emerging agentic protocol has an **"identity-shaped hole."** Binding identity to agent + task is unsolved.
- Consent must be continuous, with revocability, audit trails answering *why* (not just *what*), and human-in-the-loop.
- Merchants currently have **no way to detect human vs. agent traffic** — risks of defensive blocking.
- Canada doesn't need its own LLM, but its concentrated banking system may give it a standards advantage.
- "AI is the easy part" — the hard part is controls, governance, and trust infrastructure.

