Agents get the work, people keep the decision

Agents move into payables

Visa said its collaboration with BILL is the first live pilot to allow AI agents to complete approved buyer invoice payments end-to-end through supplier portals. In the release, the authorized BILL Payment Agent is registered using Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol and Agentic Directory, and uses tokenized payment credentials.

A person still approves

Centalion, the Geneva commodity trader formerly known as Gunvor, deployed an AI agent that prepares trade finance instruments from plain-language instructions, and it said amendment processing time fell about 80% on the first facility covered. Every transaction still goes to a treasury employee for approval (the company's own figures have not been independently verified).

A monitor for the agents

Microsoft introduced Guardian Agents on Monday, a new feature intended to monitor the AI agents a company uses. Earlier this month, TechCrunch reports, Nadella warned that we need to separate the supply of intelligence from the authority over it.

What to watch in our own shops

Put side by side, these three stories give agents the preparing and the paying while keeping approval and oversight with people and monitors. For those of us in treasury, payables or operations, a useful question is who approves each step an agent takes, and where we can see it.