Reaching the engineers who let AI agents move real money

A technology research team partnered with CleverX across two linked studies to understand how companies let AI agents carry out financial transactions: what they have set up, what safeguards they use, and what it would take to let agents run fully on their own. Both were one-on-one moderated video interviews with senior engineers, AI leads, and finance decision-makers.

• The target sat at a rare intersection: people who both build AI agents and control real payment flows.
• Generic "works in AI" or "works in payments" respondents would miss the people who actually make these decisions.
• How far each company had gone mattered, from no automation at all to agents that pay with no human approval.
• Respondents had to be willing to talk about their own company's systems and agree to being recorded.

CleverX built a detailed screener that qualified people on what they actually do, not just their job title.

• A 14-question screener checked whether they build or decide, whose money the agents spend, and how much freedom those agents have.
• It captured the specific safeguards in place, such as spending limits, approval steps, approved-vendor lists, and alerts for unusual activity.
• It surfaced real incidents, like wrong amounts or duplicate payments, and how they were fixed.
• Both studies ran as video interviews for senior, decision-level participants.

• 39% qualified on the live study (71 of 267 screened) for a very narrow audience.
• The screener also measured the market: 62% keep a person in the loop specifically because of payment risk.
• Interviews reached genuine decision-makers, with 84% saying they decide or strongly influence whether agents can make payments.

• For new and emerging roles, a screener that asks what people actually do beats targeting by job title.
• Asking about real incidents and safeguards in the screener fills each interview with rich context before it even starts.
• Running a follow-up study with the same audience builds deeper understanding of a fast-moving topic.