After stating his case for cutting interest rates in July, Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller was back on the public appearance circuit on Wednesday discussing a process that’s important to every auto-finance company.

Payments.

Speaking at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium 2025 in Teton Village, Wyo., Waller told attendees, “It is an exciting time to work in payments. While I have always been interested in the topic, I would have never imagined decades ago that payments would generate this amount of enthusiasm, where now some of the coolest jobs in tech are working in this area.”

Waller emphasized the point of his appearance was to reinforce the private and public sectors can both embrace innovation when it comes to payments.

Waller touched on many of the top-of-mind subjects in the sector, including stablecoin and the GENIUS Act that became the first major crypto-asset legislation to become law last month.

And, of course, it wouldn’t be a technology gathering without significant mentions of artificial intelligence.

“It may surprise some to learn that, within the financial sector, the payments industry has long been at the forefront of AI adoption,” Waller said. “This is true for several major waves of AI technology. Since the early 1990s, payment firms have used machine learning for things like detecting fraud and money laundering, or predicting payment flows and trends.

“More recently, as large language models and generative AI have matured, payments innovators have used the technology to further enhance fraud detection and compliance systems and to make the cumbersome process of reconciling payments files more accurate and efficient,” Waller continued. “Agentic AI systems, which operate autonomously by planning and executing multistep processes, appear to be the next wave of AI advancement.

“While agentic AI is still in its early days, payments innovators in the private sector are once again channeling the promise of this technology and rapidly building out various use cases,” he added.

So how is the Federal Reserve involved in many of these current processes and future protocols? Waller wrapped up his prepared remarks by looking forward.

“The Fed is also conducting technical research on the latest wave of innovations, including tokenization, smart contracts, and AI in payments,” Waller said. “As a payment system operator, it is important to understand trends in payments technology so that we can continue to support private sector firms that leverage our infrastructures, as well as understand whether emerging technologies could provide opportunities to improve our existing platforms and services.

“Finally, we engage with innovators like you to better understand new technologies and their potential to improve payments. In fact, it is my belief that the Federal Reserve could benefit from further engagement with innovators in industry, particularly as there is increased convergence between the traditional financial sector and the digital asset ecosystem. We are working on ways to further that engagement, so stay tuned,” he went on to say.