Towards autonomy: The next era of finance

Most CFOs still can’t answer the simplest question in business: Where is our cash right now? It’s spread across banks, entities, and currencies. On their screen: a spend management tool, a payments dashboard, an accounting platform, and a spreadsheet with numbers that are already out of date.

Modern finance teams have more tools and less clarity than ever before. We’ve automated repeatable workflows and gained accessibility through spreadsheets and dashboards, but it’s all still digitised paperwork. And while solving for automation, we’ve created a new problem: fragmentation. The complexity of this multiplies the more countries you operate in, with different banks, payment providers, accounting systems, and spend tools across Australia, the EU, and the US, guaranteeing that no single system shows a complete picture.

Now we’re at an inflection point. We’ve entered the first real platform shift in finance since the spreadsheet. AI will redefine how finance teams operate – but only if it has connected data to learn from. The fragmentation of finance systems that many businesses are currently operating with breaks the lineage of intelligence that AI needs to operate autonomously. That’s the future: moving from automated workflows to autonomous finance.

To get there, businesses need to vertically integrate their global finance tech stack, consolidating finance software (workflows, spend management, reconciliation) with their financial infrastructure layer (accounts, FX, payments, cards). AI is only as intelligent as the foundations it’s built on, so when these layers operate together on one platform, it can see every inflow, outflow, and approval flow across countries, entities, and currencies.

The next decade of finance won’t be defined by standalone tools, but by platforms built from the infrastructure layer up. This is what Airwallex is solving for with a vertically integrated, global platform, where infrastructure, software, and AI work as one. The first decade of Airwallex was spent building the foundations: securing over 80 regulatory licences, establishing direct scheme connections, and a network of local banking partnerships. This groundwork has created the foundation for AI to operate across finance operations with full visibility.

With finance software and infrastructure unified, the shift towards autonomy becomes tangible. It happens in stages:

1. Automation

Software has enabled the automation of repeatable workflows. Invoices get matched to purchase orders. Approvals follow preset rules. Payments are scheduled automatically. These are efficient but rigid, as each workflow runs in isolation.

2. Agents that understand context

Next, intelligent agents started to read policies, process information, and decide which automation to run. A vendor onboarding agent can interpret your policy, review documents, and approve a vendor, or flag exceptions for additional review. It doesn’t just follow rules, it applies judgement.

3. Autonomous finance

This is the future of finance, when dozens of agents run continuously in the background. At Airwallex, we've built over fifty agents on top of our unified software and infrastructure. For example, dynamic payment routing that chooses the optimal path based on cost, speed, and authorisation rates. FX conversions can be automated at the point of payout based on predefined risk thresholds. Compliance checks can run in real time at onboarding rather than through batch reviews. Humans can step in at any point, set approval checkpoints, or inspect decisions at any time, but the day-to-day operations run themselves.

4. AI as a strategic partner

Finally, you’ll be able to interact with AI as a strategic finance partner who will interpret data and propose actions in real time. You ask, “What is our FX exposure in Singapore next quarter?”, and it will respond with projections, hedging recommendations, and scenario modelling. It alerts you when cash flow shifts unexpectedly, customer patterns change, or when a strategic risk emerges. It understands the full lineage of your finances, from supplier relationships all the way to payouts, from revenue to reconciliation. The CFO’s role will shift from operator to architect, from managing accounts to shaping strategy.

None of this is hypothetical. The infrastructure layer is already in place: direct card issuing, local currency accounts in 60+ markets, real-time FX conversion, embedded compliance workflows. What’s changing now is how intelligence orchestrates these layers together.

Finance has always been about trust, control, and insight, and that won’t change – the operating model will. Real progress won’t come from more tools, dashboards, or banking partners. It will come from unifying them into a single system of record that intelligence can compound on.

The future belongs to finance teams that design for autonomy now – the ones who recognise that AI isn’t a layer you add, but a capability unlocked when everything underneath finally works as one. And when that happens, finance leaders will shift from chasing clarity to directing strategy and shaping what comes next.

Watch the first episode of The Airwallex Podcast, where Jack Zhang sits down with Shannon Scott to unpack how Airwallex is building the future of global finance. They explore how the company has reimagined financial operations, integrating infrastructure, software, and AI into one unified stack. From managing money across 180+ countries to deploying AI across the entire finance function, the conversation covers consolidation, automation, and what it takes to build financial systems that truly scale with ambition.