A unified dialogue on stablecoins, tokenization, and AI for payment technologies is being established by the Fed as policy in Washington begins to solidify.
On Wednesday, a symposium on advancements in payment technologies was announced by the Federal Reserve Board, to be hosted on October 21 with a focus on emerging technologies within US payment systems.
According to the announcement, policymakers, scholars, and industry stakeholders will be assembled at the event to deliberate on methods for enhancing and advancing the payments system.
“Payments innovation is driven by the evolving needs of consumers and businesses,” stated Federal Reserve Governor Christopher J. Waller in a recent release.
The conference is positioned to bring together “ideas on how to improve the safety and efficiency of payments, and hearing from those helping to shape the future of payments,” Governor Waller added.
Panel discussions at the event will explore the integration of conventional and decentralized finance, novel applications for stablecoins, the nexus of artificial intelligence and payments, and the tokenization of financial goods and services.
The event will be livestreamed on the Federal Reserve’s website, with additional details forthcoming. has contacted the central bank for more information.
The conference’s inclusion of stablecoins and tokenization connects with the perspective of the Fed and regulators, who view digital assets through the same policy lens as conventional payments.
According to Jakob Kronbichler, co-founder and CEO of on-chain credit marketplace Clearpool, it “elevates the standard for global policy dialogue” and demonstrates that “these instruments are no longer peripheral experiments but essential components of the payments infrastructure.”
Kronbichler stated that the current priority is clarity: regulations that acknowledge stablecoins as settlement assets and establish consistent standards for tokenized credit and liquidity markets. He added that transparent, uniform rules are necessary for on-chain financing solutions to “scale without fragmentation.”
AI’s Transformative Role in Payments Technology Highlighted
When questioned about the function of AI in payments, Kronbichler indicated that the technology is “integrating into the core of payments” through applications such as fraud detection, credit evaluation, and risk management.
“Regulators don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but they do need rules that make models explainable and testable, with clear governance and human oversight built in,”
he said
Last month, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission initiated its own “Crypto Sprint,” which will evaluate custody, leveraged retail trading, and consumer safeguards. It is now in its public consultation period, which will last until October 20.
The Federal Reserve’s October conference announcement comes after a joint statement on Monday from the SEC and CFTC, which aimed to clarify how registered exchanges can list specific spot crypto products, including leveraged retail trades, as part of their Project Crypto and Crypto Sprint initiatives.
The move, framed as promoting regulatory clarity and market choice, is arriving just weeks ahead of policy dialogues and trial programs from the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Bank for International Settlements.
