What question did this study set out to answer?

To develop a governance framework for autonomous payment agents in enterprise financial settings.

May 22, 2026Open Access

A Conceptual Systems Governance Framework for Autonomous Financial Execution: The Sovereign Payment Agent Model

Key Points

To develop a governance framework for autonomous payment agents in enterprise financial settings.
Proposed the Sovereign Payment Agent model incorporating a Governance Envelope architecture.
Developed a five-tier Agent Autonomy Classification model for categorizing agent capabilities.
Introduced an adversarial risk architecture to address security threats in autonomous financial systems.
Established guidelines for policy implementation and regulatory compliance through the Governance Envelope.
Defined a structured approach for audit artifacts to improve system explainability.
Identified risks in autonomous decision-making and suggested mitigation strategies.

Abstract

This paper proposes the Sovereign Payment Agent (SPA) model, a conceptual systems governance framework for the controlled deployment of autonomous payment agents within enterprise and regulated financial environments. The framework introduces four primary contributions: a Governance Envelope architecture incorporating Policy-as-Code constraints and audit artifact generation; a five-tier Agent Autonomy Classification (AAC) model; a structured audit artifact standard supporting explainability and regulatory examination; and an adversarial risk architecture addressing prompt injection, signal manipulation, policy drift, and model extraction threats. Also available on SSRN: https: //papers. ssrn. com/sol3/papers. cfm? abstractᵢd=6765180 Part 3 of a 3-paper series on the evolution of intelligent and autonomous payment systems. Part 1: https: //doi. org/10. 5281/zenodo. 20261877Part 2: https: //doi. org/10. 5281/zenodo. 20261969

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