Mashreq, the Dubai-based bank, is testing IBM’s AI agents on the software that connects its payments and banking systems. IBM says early results show engineers spending up to 60% to 70% less time on integration design and troubleshooting.
IBM announced the pilot on 12 October. It uses IBM Bob, a tool that helps engineers design, build and maintain software, on Mashreq’s integration platform, covering solution design, code review and fixing problems in live systems. That platform links the bank’s digital banking, instant payments and cross-border services, and handles an average of 650 transactions a second. IBM and GBM, a Dubai-based technology firm, are helping upgrade it.
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The AI agents are coordinated through IBM Context Forge, which is built on the Model Context Protocol, an open standard for connecting AI tools to data and systems. It gives the agents controlled access to the bank’s API specifications, design standards and operating data. About 4,000 agent requests a month pass through a secure gateway to Mashreq’s payments, banking and business systems.
What an AI agent does here
A chatbot answers a question, and a coding assistant suggests the next few lines of code. An AI agent is given a task and works through the steps itself: it reads the relevant documents, calls the tools it has access to, checks what comes back and decides what to do next.
That suits integration work. A bank’s integration platform sits between its systems, passing and translating messages between the mobile app, the core banking system, payment networks and outside partners. Building a new connection means reading each system’s interface specifications and mapping one message format onto another. Fixing a failed payment means tracing it through logs across several systems to find where it broke.
Both jobs involve a lot of reading and searching before an engineer makes a decision. An agent can do that searching, then draft the mapping or a likely fix for an engineer to review.
To do that, the agents need access to the bank’s own documentation and data, which is the job of the Model Context Protocol connection and the gateway. The gateway also limits and records what each agent can reach. That matters on a platform carrying hundreds of transactions a second, where a wrong change can hold up payments. Banks testing agents in engineering typically keep a person approving any change before it goes live.
IBM said some tasks that used to take two to three hours were finished in minutes. The figures are early and come from IBM. Mashreq hasn’t published its own measurements. The bank is also considering running IBM Bob on its own servers for critical systems.
Mohamed Abdel Razek, Mashreq’s group head of technology, transformation and information, said:
“As we continue our AI journey, we’re also evaluating how these capabilities can transform software engineering.”
Mashreq hasn’t said when the pilot ends, whether it will extend the tools beyond the integration platform, or what controls apply when an agent’s suggested change touches live payment systems.
