Who Is Liable When an AI Agent Pays? Fraud, Refunds and the Rule Gap

An AI agent with your card or wallet buys the wrong thing or is tricked into paying. Who carries the loss: you, your bank, the merchant, or the agent's maker? On September 29, 2026, Federal Reserve Governor Waller put that question on the record. Here is what US rules say, where they stop, and what owners can do now. Our own reading is marked as ours.

A Fed governor asks who is on the hook

In his speech, Waller said: "The question shifts from proving that a buyer is an authorized payer to proving that an agent has the authority to pay on the buyer's behalf." And: "Who is on the hook if an agent makes the wrong purchase?"

He offered no rule: existing frameworks "could potentially be adapted for agentic commerce," he said, while fraud systems "calibrated to human behavior, may not translate well to agents." A speech is not guidance. Our reading: agent payment liability is now a mainstream policy question.

What Regulation E says

Regulation E, section 1005.2, defines an unauthorized transfer as one "initiated by a person other than the consumer without actual authority to initiate the transfer and from which the consumer receives no benefit." It excludes transfers by "a person who was furnished the access device to the consumer's account by the consumer," until the consumer tells the institution those transfers are no longer authorized.

The text never mentions AI agents; we found no CFPB interpretation applying it to one. Our reading: if you give an agent your debit credentials, a bank could argue a bad purchase is not "unauthorized." If the agent's purchase still reached you, a bank may also argue you received a benefit. Reg E covers consumer accounts only (section 1005.2(b)), so a business deposit account depends on your bank contract.

What Regulation Z says about credit cards

Section 1026.12 defines unauthorized use as use by someone without "actual, implied, or apparent authority" and "from which the cardholder receives no benefit," and caps cardholder liability at "the lesser of $50 or the amount of money, property, labor, or services obtained by the unauthorized use before notification" to the issuer. Section 1026.13 counts as a billing error a charge for property or services "not accepted by the consumer or the consumer's designee, or not delivered ... as agreed."

Neither mentions agents. Our reading: disputes will turn on "apparent authority" (if your agent has it, the $50 cap may not apply), "designee" (whether an agent stands in for you) and whether you received a benefit. No official source we found has addressed any of these.

The honest gap

We found no CFPB or FTC rule or guidance on agent-initiated payments. The nearest, a 2025 CFPB reconsideration, asks who can act as a consumer's "representative" for data access, not payments.

Techstrong.ai reported on October 1 that the FTC is investigating OpenAI, Anthropic and others over AI agent risks. We found no ftc.gov release; the reported focus is agent safety and liability broadly, not payments. See also our coverage of the Stop Rogue AI Act and the AI Agent Act.

Onchain finality versus card disputes

Cards have dispute processes; x402's "exact" scheme does not. In x402 version 2, the current spec (v1 used different header names, see our x402 explainer), the FAQ calls "exact" a push payment, irreversible once executed. Payloads are "signed by the buyer," so a facilitator that tampers with one could not settle it.

The buyer cannot reverse it, but the same FAQ says a seller can refund by sending a new transfer back to the buyer. A newer auth-capture scheme adds a built-in flow for hold, capture, void and refund. No official source we found confirms whether Reg E covers a given stablecoin wallet transfer.

Industry mandates fill the space

Google's AP2 uses signed "Mandates" as "verifiable proof of a user's instructions." Stripe's Shared Payment Tokens are "scoped to a specific merchant and basket total." These are industry standards, not law. Our reading: in a dispute, that signed record will be the first evidence of what the human approved.

A liability checklist for owners

Our suggestions, not agency rules:

1. Map each money path: consumer credit card (Reg Z), consumer debit (Reg E), business deposit account (your bank contract; business credit cards keep Reg Z's cap unless 10+ cards and a separate agreement), stablecoin wallet (unsettled).
2. Ask your bank in writing how it treats payments by software you set up.
3. Know how to revoke: learn the notice your bank accepts to end an agent's authority.
4. Selling via x402? "Exact" cannot be reversed by the buyer; you can still refund with a new transfer, and auth-capture adds holds and refunds. Publish a refund policy.
5. Put agent errors in the vendor contract. See questions to ask before you buy an AI agent.

For spend limits and kill switches, see our Mastercard and Ramp piece. For the full map, see our AI agent payments guide.

Limitations

Sources as of October 9, 2026. No official source applies Reg E or Reg Z to AI agents, so each application here is our reading. The FTC probe is press-reported only. This is not legal or financial advice; consult your bank and an attorney.