Santander has 8 dated AI-agent moves on the record, from Jan 20, 2026 to Oct 19, 2026, and 5 agent use cases on its profile, 2 in production (Process-automation agents and AI in software development). The latest move, on Oct 19, 2026: NVIDIA: Model Arena, specialised models and a three-year collaboration framework (Banco Santander newsroom). Each row below is the bank's own dated entry with the stage it describes and its source; the strategy, numbers, leaders and regulators are on Santander's AI strategy page, and the same rows sit in date order with every other bank on the tracker.
What AI agents does Santander run, and at what stage?
Santander's profile records 2 agent use cases in production: Process-automation agents and AI in software development. 3 more are at pilot, rollout or announcement stage.
- In production
Process-automation agents
More than 280 agents in production helping automate manual tasks and end-to-end workflows in credit, fraud, KYC and operations.
- In production
AI in software development
17,000 people used agentic AI in software development in May 2026 and 40% of all code in June 2026 was developed by AI; the 2025 annual report cites over 6,000 developers using coding agents.
- Pilot
Agentic payments with Mastercard Agent Pay and Getnet
A live Europe-first agent-executed payment in a controlled environment (pilot stage) and Getnet infrastructure for merchants to accept AI-agent-initiated payments, including a first case in Mexico.
- Pilot
Agentic purchases with Visa Intelligent Commerce (Latin America)
Controlled pilot transactions in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay in which AI agents bought books and, in Brazil, chocolates within defined consent parameters.
- Announced
A2K protocol for governed agent access to knowledge
An open specification from Santander AI Lab for agents to resolve which knowledge bases they may use and to consume them with citations, access decisions and audit data, with Python reference packages; Santander has not said whether it runs in production.
What has Santander announced about AI agents, and when?
Oct 20261 move
NVIDIA: Model Arena, specialised models and a three-year collaboration frameworkPilot
Santander AI Lab built Model Arena to evaluate open-weight models against banking tasks, specialises models with NVIDIA NeMo Customizer, uses NVIDIA Kumo models for structured data and runs inference in its own architecture with NVIDIA Dynamo-Triton; in selected experimental use cases serving costs fell from around €5 to approximately €0.03 per interaction. A new three-year framework with NVIDIA covers foundation models, AI agents, fraud and AML, real-time decisioning and simulation including a banking digital twin.
Sep 20261 move
Santander AI Lab launches A2K, a protocol for agent-to-knowledge accessAnnounced
An open specification, running over MCP, A2A and HTTPS, that lets enterprise AI agents discover, select, query, cite, audit and reconcile knowledge bases with scoped authority and lifecycle management.
Jun 20262 moves
Getnet infrastructure for AI agent-initiated paymentsPilot
Getnet, Santander's merchant payments platform, launches infrastructure for merchants to accept payments initiated by AI agents, and with Mastercard and Neivor completes the first real-world case in Mexico and Latin America using Mastercard Agent Pay.
Group signs AI memorandum with G42Announced
Covers AI-enabled advisory and savings, a banking intelligence layer and agentic financial services, with G42's Inception and Presight; definitive agreements are still to be signed.
Mar 20262 moves
Visa Intelligent Commerce pilot in five Latin American marketsPilot
Santander completes controlled agentic purchases in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay with Visa Intelligent Commerce (books in four markets, chocolates in Brazil), described as the first end-to-end AI-agent payments in Latin America.
Europe's first live agentic payment with MastercardPilot
Santander and Mastercard complete a live end-to-end payment executed by an AI agent using Mastercard Agent Pay, in a controlled environment through Santander's live payments infrastructure; Finextra reports it is still a pilot, not a commercial rollout.
Feb 20261 move
Investor day: more than EUR 1bn of AI business value by 2028Announced
Data and AI are called a key lever of ONE Transformation, contributing around one percentage point of cost-to-income improvement; Bloomberg reports about EUR 300m of extra revenue and about EUR 700m of lower costs, with agentic commerce and 'primacy with customers' among the levers.
Jan 20261 move
Getnet sets out its agentic-commerce strategyPilot
With a report by Monitor Deloitte, Getnet describes agent identification and validation, standardised APIs for agent-initiated payments and interoperability with industry protocols, building on its Single Entry Point API; it cites estimates that agentic AI will influence up to 30% of global e-commerce value by 2030.
What AI agents does Santander have in production?
Santander's profile records 2 agent use cases in production: Process-automation agents and AI in software development. 3 more are at pilot, rollout or announcement stage.
What has Santander announced about AI agents, and when?
8 dated moves from Jan 20, 2026 to Oct 19, 2026: 0 describe an agent in production, 0 a rollout, 5 a pilot and 3 an announcement. The latest, on Oct 19, 2026: NVIDIA: Model Arena, specialised models and a three-year collaboration framework (Banco Santander newsroom).
Where does this timeline come from?
From Banco Santander's profile on this site, which dates each move and cites its source; the build checks every link. The stage is the one the bank describes, and nothing here is written by a model. The profile is refreshed on a biweekly routine; the record last changed on Oct 26, 2026.
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