The repo market is the largely invisible plumbing of modern finance. It allows banks, hedge funds, asset managers and money-market funds to exchange cash for high-quality collateral, supporting government-bond liquidity, monetary-policy transmission and leveraged strategies. According to Bank of England data, average daily gilt repo volumes reached about £250 billion, with roughly £935billion of positions outstanding. Yet 98% of activity was still intermediated by dealers, whereby reflecting a structure built around balance sheets, bilateral limits and processes designed for human-speed markets. That structure is beginning to change. Autonomous AI agents are now emerging that can monitor markets, compare counterparties, negotiate terms and execute transactions within delegated limits. At the same time, tokenised deposits, regulated stablecoins and central-bank settlement services are creating programmable cash capable of moving against tokenised securities. Visa’s agentic-commerce inf…
The $trillion repo market meets AI agents and tokenised cash
