Agentic AI is changing the way payments get from point A to point B. 

AI-powered payments platform Volante launched its Sense Agents in June that use real-time technology to ensure payments are sent with the lowest risk of congestion or rejection as possible, Deepak Gupta, chief product, engineering and delivery officer at Volante, told FinAi News. 

Sense Agents monitor the turnaround on payments rails in real time and reroute payments to less congested rails to ensure speed of settlement, Gupta said. 

For example, if a payment is routed through the Federal Reserve’s FedNow, but a Sense Agent determines that the turnaround time is long, the agent will automatically move the payment to The Clearing House’s Real-Time Payments (RTP) rail, Gupta said. 

Gupta said the process doesn’t change the payment, just the route. 

“The average consumer doesn’t care about RTP versus FedNow versus ACH,” James White, vice president of growth and market strategy at fintech Engage Fi, told FinAi News. 

“What they care most about is getting the transaction to process as quickly as possible, for as little cost as possible. 

Tracing congestion

RTP processes 1.18 million transactions valued at $5 billion every day, according to The Clearing House (TCH). And the daily volume on FedNow is roughly 50,000 transactions totaling $3 billion, according to the Fed.  

With that much volume, there are several factors that can slow down a payment and most start with a bank or credit union’s core, White said. 

Many bottlenecks occur within the systems that connect to the payments rail, White said, noting, processing limits or fraud checks can slow things down. 

More agents

Sense Agents are just part of Volante’s latest suite of payments agents announced in June, when the tech provider rolled out its Vol360i agentic AI platform. 

Volante also debuted agents that can prevent transaction errors, repair transactions in real time and predict payment outcomes. 

The global agentic AI banking payments infrastructure market is projected to be valued at $52 billion by 2034; it was valued at $7.84 billion last year, according to consultancy firm Market Intelo.  

Volante’s agents are in beta testing, but the firm expects that live customers will use the agents before year-end, Gupta said. 

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