Greater cooperation between ecosystem players will make it easier and safer for people to pay and move money using stablecoins
Payment options, whether cash, check or card, have always varied at checkout. However, the convergence of several trends, including advances in artificial intelligence and the rise of cryptocurrencies, is rapidly expanding these options. This development not only introduces new ways to pay, but also changes how money flows, how trust is created, and how value is generated.
If there is a key trend going into 2026, it is how payments evolve, becoming more personalized, predictive, and seamlessly interoperable between traditional and new payment platforms, and how often the work of building the infrastructure, setting standards and forging partnerships to support these new experiences comes to fruition.
Proxy trade will expand in 2026
In 2025, new generation AI is quickly proving to be more than just a recommendation engine, with the promise that AI-powered agents will begin managing transactions on behalf of consumers and businesses. Proxy commerce will expand in 2026, but more importantly, the barriers surrounding it will expand as well, making it easier and safer for businesses to integrate proxy commerce into their transaction flows.
The industry is focusing on how to determine that an agent is legitimate, how to strengthen authentication with agents and reduce fraud, and how to capture intent if an AI transaction goes wrong. “You can automate commerce, but you can’t automate trust,” he says. MasterCard In his latest research.
Greater encryption integrity
Cryptocurrency’s wild ride may have been the financial story of the early 2000s, but mainstreaming cryptocurrencies outside of investing has proven elusive. The past year and a half has brought regulatory clarity in the US and Europe around stablecoins — cryptocurrencies pegged to government currencies — creating the confidence the financial sector needs to commercialize.
In the coming year, greater collaboration between ecosystem players will make paying and moving money with stablecoins easier and more secure for people, from facilitating payments to stablecoin wallets, enabling cross-chain purchases of stablecoins and bitcoin, and simplifying cross-border and cross-currency settlement.
Double your digital identity
Mastercard’s recent research into cybercrime found that 80 percent of global consumers were the targets of a fraud attempt in the past year. As the digital ecosystem expands, it’s more important than ever that businesses and consumers know who they can trust.
More robust identity verification tools that make it faster and easier to prove your identity (and confirm the people you interact with) will be essential for the growth of the digital ecosystem.
“We will see digital identity wallets that facilitate access to financial, government and other services, including through age verification, as well as accelerating the ability to create verified pseudonyms for cryptocurrency transactions, eliminating the need for complex addresses that often play a role in fraud,” Mastercard added.
Expanding digital identity services to developing markets could accelerate the process of integration into the digital economy. Bottom line: A digital identity that feels as natural and trusted as making a payment.
Circular economy model of growth
Mastercard’s research also shows that a growing wave of consumers, led by Generation Z, are adopting the circular economy model, which prioritizes maximizing resource use and relies on reuse, resale and repair.
This creates the opportunity for renewed payment loops, where transactions can enable and incentivize more sustainable choices, often via micro-transactions and secure and easy peer-to-peer payments, such as refill forms, return programmes, and deposits and returns for reusable goods such as coffee cups.
For the consumer, it’s a virtuous circle, making returning a cup as simple as using it once. For retailers, there are virtues too, ranging from lower packaging costs to deeper loyalty.
Allocation of payments on the rise
Payments and banking also adapt to the consumer, not the other way around. In 2026, we will see the emergence of dynamic tools and platforms that can be customized to our spending behaviors and financial goals. This will include payment credentials that allow us to set rules for how we pay, such as credit for large purchases or debit for everyday expenses: convenience, but with controls.
Leveraging insights from billions of transactions, nearly 160 billion in 2024, Mastercard also delivers personalized content and more personalized offers at just the right time. Small businesses and those with thin credit files may benefit from lenders’ access to deeper insights, advanced analytics, and open-access financing data allowed to better assess the creditworthiness of individual loan applicants.
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Global cross-border payments will exceed $250 trillion by 2027
In-store payment may become more seamless with biometric solutions, while one-click online payment will be within reach by 2030, thanks to the acceleration of tokenization around the world, eliminating the manual entry of card numbers and static passwords.
On the business side, real-time payments are becoming real, as Mastercard Transaction Stream, the brand-new processing technology that can clear in real-time and settle payments on the same day, continues to be implemented, freeing up capital for businesses.
With global cross-border payments expected to exceed $250 trillion by 2027, the market can expect more innovation and investment in this area, from pseudonym-based money transfers to make it easier to send money to loved ones back home to expanding fast, secure and transparent cross-border capabilities that will, among other benefits, enable small businesses to access the global market.
