Rob Rubin (00:00):

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(00:25):

Hello everyone and welcome to the Banking and Payment show, an EMARKETER podcast brought to you by Viasat Ads. Today is December 30th, 2025. I'm Rob Rubin, head of EMARKETER Advisory and your host. Today we're talking about two trends to watch in 2026, consumer's use of Agentic AI in their financial lives and the development of Stablecoin payment rails becoming bank grade in 2026. This will be a lot to unpack, so I've asked EMARKETER senior analyst Myra Thomas and Grace Broadbent to join me. Hey, Myra, I think this is your first podcast. In fact, I know it's your first podcast.

Myra Thomas (01:06):

It absolutely is. I'm looking forward to it.

Rob Rubin (01:08):

I'm really excited to have you on. We've been trying to get you on since you joined.

Myra Thomas (01:12):

I appreciate it. Thanks very much.

Rob Rubin (01:14):

Happy to have you and Grace, you're a regular, so always happy to have you on.

Grace Broadbent (01:18):

Always happy to be here and excited to be with Myra here today.

Rob Rubin (01:21):

I've built a little on topic icebreaker, so before we jump into Agentic AI and Stablecoins, I want to get a sense of how you two actually feel about automation in your own financial lives. We're going to play a quick game, which I'm calling delegate or don't you dare.

Grace Broadbent (01:44):

I love it.

Rob Rubin (01:45):

I'll name a money chore and you can tell me if you would delegate it to an AI agent or don't you dare, meaning no way. It stays human only. Grace, you can start negotiating your internet or phone bill every year.

Grace Broadbent (01:59):

Delegate.

Myra Thomas (02:00):

Delegate.

Rob Rubin (02:00):

Delegate. Yep.

(02:02):

Automatically moving extra cash from your checking into savings or investment at the end of each week.

Grace Broadbent (02:08):

Don't you dare?

Myra Thomas (02:09):

Yeah. I'd have to agree. Don't you dare.

Rob Rubin (02:11):

All right. There we go.

Grace Broadbent (02:12):

Could maybe put terms on it, but not fully take over.

Rob Rubin (02:17):

You put rails on that one.

Myra Thomas (02:17):

There you go.

Rob Rubin (02:17):

Guardrails.

Myra Thomas (02:18):

Makes sense.

Rob Rubin (02:20):

Canceling subscriptions you don't use without asking you every time.

Grace Broadbent (02:24):

Delegate.

Myra Thomas (02:24):

Delegate for sure.

Rob Rubin (02:26):

100%. Choosing which payment rail to use behind the scenes, a card, an ACH, maybe a stable coin.

Grace Broadbent (02:33):

Delegate.

Myra Thomas (02:34):

Yeah, I think she's right. I think delegate as well.

Rob Rubin (02:37):

All right. I think that this has been interesting because I think it shows that there is some tension with the topic already today about what things that you would delegate are likely things you're not actually doing today.

Grace Broadbent (02:51):

Yeah and things we don't know about. People don't know if it's on a card rail or an ACH trail.

Myra Thomas (02:56):

Exactly.

Rob Rubin (02:56):

The things that you didn't know about, but when it was talking about moving money, which you do, that was no way. I think we've quickly discovered the rub is the things that you have no idea how to do, you might be willing to let them do if it didn't cost a lot or if there wasn't a lot of risk.

Grace Broadbent (03:14):

Investments and savings are always a touchy subject.

Myra Thomas (03:16):

Yeah, exactly.

Rob Rubin (03:17):

That is a really good big picture into this and in headlines, I pick an article or a report related to the topic and we discuss. Today I picked our banking trends to watch in 2026 report that you both worked on, so let's jump right in. The report highlights that about 70% of banks are already using Agentic AI in some capacity. From your perspective, what does that actually mean for consumers right now?

Myra Thomas (03:52):

I think anything that has to do with a financial decision or anything that is dealing with financial stress will ultimately not be dealt with by Agentic AI. Today we're really just talking mostly about behind the scenes and that's where it pretty much stands for the moment.

Grace Broadbent (04:08):

Yeah, I agree. A lot of what we're talking about today is going to be very experimental phases. Things are maybe in pilots, but things aren't really... The full Agentic solutions aren't really in front of consumers right now. It's more backend stuff, internal operations for bank employees and things like that and then experimenting with the consumer facing stuff.

Rob Rubin (04:28):

Are there any experiments that seem interesting? Have they published any or any that have been talked about?

Grace Broadbent (04:35):

As a payments person, I will give a payments example that some banks are doing. Citi and US Bank partnered with MasterCard's Agentic payments technology. They're the first two banks to implement it. Basically it just allows these cardholders to easily link their credit and debit cards to AI agents.

Rob Rubin (04:54):

All right.

Myra Thomas (04:55):

Yeah. I think that's probably one of the bigger ones that I would mention as well. I think for the moment though, we're still waiting to see some major pilot happen. I think the biggest issue remains around ways to standardize data and interoperability. I think mostly the transactions and what we will see will come further down the road.

Rob Rubin (05:21):

All right. One stat that jumped out at me in their report was that 34% of consumers say they don't want their bank using AI at all. What do you read into that?

Myra Thomas (05:31):

I think mostly consumers are a fickle lot and they're all so suspicious and they're always going to wonder if they're going to get the best deal. They're worried about transparency of transactions and of course data security and privacy and those are always going to be the things that are going to have to be dealt with upfront in order to make the consumer feel much more comfortable with any sort of AI transaction.

Grace Broadbent (05:58):

I also think there's a consumer education issue. Banks have been using AI for at least a decade, decades.

Rob Rubin (06:06):

Right. Machine learning.

Grace Broadbent (06:07):

Yeah. Machine learning has always been around. It's now getting into the GenAI and Agentic AI and all these AI headlines are starting to scare consumers of AI taking over, AI managing my money without a say, but what banks are actually doing right now is none of that scary stuff. They're just using it to streamline operations, to streamline consumers, operations and things like that. I think there's-

Rob Rubin (06:36):

Fraud detection.

Grace Broadbent (06:36):

Fraud detection. Yeah, fraud would be way more plentiful than it is right now if all banks were not using AI based fraud protection and things like that. I think it's really about consumer education of what AI is doing and showing that it's all about the small steps right now that are eventually going to lead into greater automation.

Rob Rubin (07:00):

I wonder if AI agents acceptance is going to be built into the, I'm just thinking off of my head right now, but like if AI agents are going to be built into a use case as opposed to changing a behavior. A use case, like a tool that comes out, which is AI agent driven to cancel your subscriptions, right? It's sort of use case oriented around what it can do and it can help you in that regard. Would that be the way AI agents come or is somebody going to say, "Hey, I'm Sally, your new AI agent and I can do all these things for you"?

Grace Broadbent (07:40):

I think it has to start with those smaller steps and give consumers a real incentive to use it. Again, the subscription is a great example. Everyone hates duplicate subscriptions or ones they don't even know they have and building in those smaller steps is really a good way to grow trust, build trust, grow consumer awareness of what this actually means and what it doesn't mean in that my data is protected and things like that and then banks can go to the fully automated agents that take over bigger tasks.

Myra Thomas (08:11):

I think consumers develop certain habits too when it comes to financial transactions. I mean, if you look at mobile wallets, for instance. It took a while for that technology to even take traction and it was really a tipping point with the pandemic that really got people to think about using it. Even after that, there had to be additional enabling technology that allowed it to truly be functional, whether it was near field communication or whatever else. I mean, we're still talking about super apps at this point and we haven't really gotten there, so it's really hard to say exactly-

Rob Rubin (08:48):

I would argue that in other parts of the world, we have gotten to super apps.

Myra Thomas (08:53):

We have. We have, but I think the use of cell phones and most of those countries started with digital technology. They were reliant on phones to begin with and so they developed around that and we're sort of going the other way, if that makes any sense.

Rob Rubin (09:12):

You mean they were developed around a digital infrastructure?

Myra Thomas (09:14):

Exactly.

Rob Rubin (09:14):

We were in the pots, plain old telephone.

Myra Thomas (09:17):

Exactly. Exactly.

Grace Broadbent (09:19):

They kind of skipped the cards and went straight to wallets.

Myra Thomas (09:21):

They skipped the cards step. There ya go. Much more eloquent.

Grace Broadbent (09:25):

No, I think it's all about consumer incentive. They need an incentive to make a big behavioral switch.

Rob Rubin (09:32):

Behavioral switch.

Myra Thomas (09:32):

Absolutely.

Rob Rubin (09:33):

This is a good time to transition from that sort of talking about Agentic AI to Stablecoin payment rails because the report also says Stablecoins are moving from policy to product and could become quote bank grade infrastructure. For Grace, what makes 2026 the turning point for this?

Grace Broadbent (09:54):

2025 we saw really strong momentum in terms of growing Stablecoin support, adoption, acceptance and that really started because of regulatory movement. The Trump administration really put their full support behind Stablecoins, even though legislation and regulations still getting worked out.

Rob Rubin (10:16):

Did you know that they have their own Stablecoins?

Grace Broadbent (10:18):

I did.

Rob Rubin (10:18):

Trump coins and everything?

Grace Broadbent (10:21):

Melania has a coin too.

Rob Rubin (10:21):

I wonder if that was related. I don't know. Just asking.

Grace Broadbent (10:24):

Well, I don't know if we want to get into that.

Rob Rubin (10:25):

I'm just asking questions.

Grace Broadbent (10:32):

The ethics of all that, but it did help. It did help Stablecoins get that long term publicity, long term kind of support, but really the regulation was the turning point in 2025, but really what's changing in 2026 is that banks are getting more involved. It's moving kind of from FinTech experimentation, to really the legacy financial institutions are starting to really dive into Stablecoins, grow their acceptance.

Rob Rubin (11:00):

How does that drive with the retailers Stablecoins? Starbucks?

Grace Broadbent (11:06):

We love the Starbucks example. It's still being worked out. I mean, right now it's like we think of Starbucks and I would predict Amazon and Walmart.

Rob Rubin (11:18):

Dunking Do.

Grace Broadbent (11:18):

Dunkin Do. We love the names. I don't have a clever ones for Amazon or Walmart, but I do predict personally that they're going to come up with their own stable coins.

Rob Rubin (11:27):

Are they going to compete with banks for Stablecoin dollars?

Grace Broadbent (11:30):

Yes and no. Walmart specifically is really trying to build out its own financial services ecosystem, so that would be kind of contained, but I think this just speaks to a bigger picture of Stablecoins are still very early in growth and there's still a lot of hurdles that need to be overcome. There's still still a lot of issues of what will be the dominant Stablecoin, will banks work together? How will they work together? Et cetera.

Rob Rubin (11:58):

One line that I loved in the report, banks will begin linking Stablecoins to loyalty ecosystems, yield bearing accounts and automated contracts. This sort of gets into programmable money. How transformative is programmable money really?

Grace Broadbent (12:14):

Stablecoins are essentially smart money. They can inherently listen for data and respond to that data the way they are programmed on the blockchain. I think it's easier to give examples than to explain it in higher theory. For example, if you're making a payment, your money won't move out of your account until the package is delivered to your door. It will know inherently not to move money until something's delivered or for example, you're paying rent. It will keep all your money in your savings account until the second you have to pay rent, it will move your money out of your account, give it to your landlord, so it's always making interest. Just like little decisions like that. It will make smarter decisions with your money. Overall, Stablecoins can really listen to data, whatever the program, whatever the rule is you want it to be, whether it's a loyalty program saying, use this loyalty money here, don't use my credit card here or use my debit card here and not buy now, pay later or whatever it might be. It can make those decisions for you.

Rob Rubin (13:19):

I have a real life Dunkin Donuts example.

Grace Broadbent (13:22):

Let's hear it.

Myra Thomas (13:23):

Okay.

Rob Rubin (13:23):

My brother-in-law loves Dunkin Donuts and he goes to Dunkin Donuts all the time, like on his way to work, so he's got a lot of Dunkin Donuts loyalty points. If he had a Dunkin Donuts Stablecoin when he went to pay, it could figure out when his loyalty points were expiring and use his loyalty points and balance them. Whereas now he's in a scenario where his loyalty points are all going to expire and if you're near him when you're at Dunking Donuts, you're getting a free coffee because he's got to burn all of it.

Myra Thomas (14:03):

He might be too agitated with the caffeine to think about it.

Grace Broadbent (14:06):

Well, there's ways to the consumer benefits, but there's also ways for brands to benefit off of it and set their own rules. For example, they can say like, "Your $1 of Dunking Donuts points will be worth $2 if you use it by Friday to encourage higher spend that week."

Myra Thomas (14:22):

That's a great one.

Rob Rubin (14:22):

That's a great use case.

Grace Broadbent (14:22):

Or it will be worth $10 if you hold onto it for a month to just like encourage higher retention over time. There's ways-

Rob Rubin (14:31):

I can see CFOs getting rashy right now. Wait, what? You could control those rules?

Grace Broadbent (14:40):

I know.

Rob Rubin (14:43):

They looked, they had all this money in their unaccrued revenue pile and now they don't.

Grace Broadbent (14:49):

Yeah. You got to balance the economics with it because they love the unused points and things like that.

Rob Rubin (14:54):

This is a great time to move to our next segment because we talked about AI agents and we talked about Stablecoin rails. To me, the next obvious question is, do these trends converge? Our last segment, we're going to kick off a friendly debate. In the debate, I've asked you guys already to take opposing positions, which are not necessarily your positions, but we're using them as a way of teasing out some of the points. We're going to do two rounds and you each get up to a minute. You don't need to take the minute if you just nail it in the first 10 seconds and then as usual, I'm the judge. Grace, you're going to take the position that AI agents will naturally use Stablecoin rails because they are programmable, instant and built for automation. Myra's position is that AI agents will rise regardless of which rails they use because consumers care about outcomes, not the underlying settlement system.

(16:04):

Round one is going to be about infrastructure versus consumer behavior. Grace, you're going to go first to make your case. Why do you believe AI-driven financial automation pushes banks and FinTechs towards stable coin rails?

Grace Broadbent (16:20):

I would argue AI agents and the traditional banking system don't seamlessly work together. For example, AI works 24/7 and can make decisions in milliseconds. The banking system, for the most part, 9 to 5, takes holidays off, weekends, batch payments, takes days to settle. Whereas Stablecoins are real time, 24/7 can be used anytime and Stablecoins can keep up with the pace of AI.

(16:51):

Additionally, another issue that comes up is micro payments. AI agents often need to buy tiny slices of data or services like one cent to access a specific API or to five cents to read a newspaper article or something like that and you really can't make those micro payments with credit cards or bank transfers with the fixed fees and things like that, but Stablecoins allow for these micro payments and they allow for these micro payments to be done in an efficient matter where it doesn't cost triple the amount to access an API.

Rob Rubin (17:26):

All right. That was good in your minute. I'm going to say that.

Grace Broadbent (17:28):

Thank you.

Rob Rubin (17:31):

Myra you have to now respond. Why do you believe AI doesn't need new rails to take off with consumers?

Myra Thomas (17:37):

I think for the consumer, the lack of transparency is an issue, but as things develop, they will develop and it doesn't necessarily mean that AI has to be a part of all of this. Transactions are happening for the most part every day and most consumers are more than happy with the way things are right now. I can't necessarily see a world where AI is necessarily going to make their transactions that much better, that will push the needle in order to make this a standard.

Rob Rubin (18:13):

Are we thinking about transactions that exist today and now we're just using a different method to process them because like Grace, you were talking about transactions which aren't possible today, those micro payments. I wonder, how are you going to put micro payments on the current rails if that becomes a use case?

Myra Thomas (18:34):

That is a very good question.

Grace Broadbent (18:35):

Thank you, Rob. You're doing my rebuttal for me.

Myra Thomas (18:38):

I think he is. I think he is. That's a great point actually. I must agree on that one.

Grace Broadbent (18:43):

Yeah. We're really talking about payments, as you said, that don't exist and payments have to keep up with the pace of AI technology.

Rob Rubin (18:52):

I think that it was fixed against you, Myra, but I'm giving Grace round one.

Grace Broadbent (18:58):

A win's a win.

Rob Rubin (18:59):

You take the win, 100%, but I'm going to tell you that everybody's a winner.

Myra Thomas (19:05):

That's good to know. I'll get a participation trophy.

Rob Rubin (19:10):

There's a round two.

Myra Thomas (19:11):

Participation trophy.

Rob Rubin (19:12):

There's a round two and you go first. If consumers already hesitate to let banks use AI at all, would a new payment rail make that easier or harder?

Myra Thomas (19:24):

I guess it really matters on how you interpret that. I think the education process of trying to tell consumers how payment rails work in the first place, are they really going to understand that?

Rob Rubin (19:38):

Do they even know what that means, a payment rail?

Myra Thomas (19:41):

Do they know what that means?

Grace Broadbent (19:43):

I would say they don't know.

Myra Thomas (19:43):

No, they don't. No, they don't, but I think they do know about what this AI is and if they understand that transactions are being processed differently, will there be some fear about this AI in the background? Possibly. While it might make their transactions easier, would they hesitate to use it? I think that's a possibility. I think once again, what Grace said, it's more about education than anything else, but how do you explain how transactions take place behind the scenes and the transparency of that transaction, when you might be talking about an energetic transaction and picking a particular payment for the consumer, that might be a much more complicated thing to explain and it might make it much harder for them to want to be a participant in that transaction.

Rob Rubin (20:36):

Okay. If AI agents are going to automate multi-step financial tasks like paying bills, moving money, managing subscriptions, why are Stablecoin rails better suited for that automation?

Grace Broadbent (20:49):

Because Stablecoins are essentially code already. They are variables in the smart contract and so an AI agent can treat them exactly like they would treat any other data they're given. The logic can be built directly into the transfer. It goes back to a lot of the examples I give. It won't release the money until the good or service is at your door.

Rob Rubin (21:13):

Until Amazon takes the picture of it standing at your...

Grace Broadbent (21:15):

I would like it to be inside my door rather than picture because I've gotten a lot of stolen packages on my doorstep.

Myra Thomas (21:21):

I agree.

Grace Broadbent (21:23):

But yes and it builds in the logic and even more complicated things than that of like, if this happens and it can get delivered on time, make the payment, but if it can't get delivered on time, cancel it and refund it automatically.

Myra Thomas (21:38):

I would debate that because at some point, what is a Agentic? If we're setting up these many parameters, where does the parameter stop in order to say, "Okay, I want to buy a pair of shoes. They have to be blue. You can only use this particular card." How many parameters will the consumer actually need in order to make a transaction truly autonomous?

Rob Rubin (22:03):

I think we always pick the example of choosing shopping for something of personal choice.

Myra Thomas (22:10):

Of course.

Rob Rubin (22:10):

I think what we're talking about are efficiency tasks.

Myra Thomas (22:14):

Sure.

Rob Rubin (22:15):

Canceling subscriptions, nobody wants to have subscriptions that they don't use, but the idea of figuring out how to do that yourself is complicated. If there was a agent that could figure it out for you, there's no friction there.

Myra Thomas (22:29):

What do you see, Grace, as the easiest transaction that consumers might be willing to make that step?

Grace Broadbent (22:36):

In addition to subscriptions, I think early examples could be bill pay of not making the payment until your paycheck comes in and then automatically adding maybe $200 to the savings account and $100 to the savings account or things like that. I think it's all about smaller decisions now before it gets larger.

Rob Rubin (22:58):

We're at a really good place and I want to end by asking you each to come up with like one sentence and my question is, what's the biggest thing banks should keep in mind as AI agents and next gen payment rails evolve together?

Grace Broadbent (23:14):

AI agents will transform the financial ecosystem, so if the banking system can't offer money that moves at the same speed of AI, agents will simply bypass banks entirely.

Rob Rubin (23:26):

All right.

Myra Thomas (23:27):

I think that's a great jumping off point. I made that sort of point in one of my reports as well. Banks need to figure out their place in this new ecosystem, while FinTechs and big tech is really sort of circumventing their place in the Agentic world.

Rob Rubin (23:46):

It's been happening for a long time, right? They've been getting disintermediated out of everything for years and they've been trying to find ways to stay involved with consumers.

Grace Broadbent (23:57):

I will say this is not bad news for banks. Banks are not going anywhere. They're not getting fully disintermediated. It's still like so early in this journey that there's still plenty of time for banks to get started on their AI plans and things like that.

Rob Rubin (24:12):

We have to wrap this up. You guys, thank you so much for coming today. I've had a real blast on this topic.

Grace Broadbent (24:18):

It was a pleasure.

Myra Thomas (24:19):

Yeah, it was great. We could talk for another hour.

Rob Rubin (24:21):

I know and thanks everyone for listening to The Banking and Payment Show, an EMARKETER podcast brought to you by Viasat Ads. Thank you to our studio team that puts these episodes together. Our next episode is on January 20th, so be sure to check it out. See you then.