TRENDS AND INSIGHTS From AI Shopping to Strides in Stablecoin: Top Payments Predictions For 2026

2025 was a transformative year for payments. 2026 will eclipse it.

Incredible software, globally ubiquitous mobile hardware, on-demand compute power, near-limitless data, GenAI, quantum computing, blockchain – these technological leaps are driving enormous change not only in society generally, but specifically in how we engage with our money. As much or more than any industry, payments is embracing these new technologies to drive innovation around the world. Given this transformation, we see exciting times ahead. Here are our top payments predictions for 2026.

1. Agentic Commerce Moves Mainstream

We have moved from face-to-face commerce, to eCommerce, to mobile commerce, and now on to agentic commerce where agents transact on behalf of consumers and businesses. In 2026, AI-supported shopping will become very real for all of us, and agentic commerce will naturally follow.

Imagine opening your ChatGPT app, but now there is a new button: “Buy for Me.” When you click it and program your agent, three things happen:

1. Enabling Payments: Load your favorite card. Authenticated, tokenized, and secured. Now your agent can safely purchase for you.

2. Personalizing Preferences: Share your shopping history and preferences (via a secure data token). Now your agent can shop for you by asking: “What would Oliver choose if faced with these purchase options?”

3. Controlling Spend: Empower your agent to shop – but on your terms. Yes, in travel and dining; No, in healthcare. Yes, if the bill is below $100; No, if it is above.

Now an agent becomes my personal shopper. It is an LLM not only perusing my favorite eCommerce sites, but also understanding my likes and dislikes so it can make decisions that reflect me.

As top brands bet big on AI-fueled shopping experiences moving mainstream, the natural next step into full agentic commerce will gain momentum in 2026. Visa is providing key infrastructure and tools now in partnership with ecosystem partners to enable the evolution. This might seem futuristic, but it won’t be for long. The innovation of today is the business-as-usual of tomorrow.

2. The Fight for Identity Enters the AI Era

Despite my excitement for AI commerce, there is a downside: Criminals can deploy the same innovations for their nefarious goals. And they are coming after identity (with AI powered deepfakes, agentic scams, synthetic IDs).

In the past, fraud occurred at the transaction level – fraudsters would steal one transaction at a time. But with the advances in AI technology, now bad guys are moving upstream where they can steal a consumer’s entire identity using hyper-realistic scams and impersonations. Once they have stolen your identity, they own all transactions initiated from it. It is fraud at scale – and the damage that it leaves in its wake can be devastating.

2026 will, unfortunately, see a material increase in the sophistication and volume of these AI powered identity attacks. This escalation will herald a new AI battle for identity with increased investment, focus and partnership. This is a fight that no bank, merchant, fintech or government can win on their own. The industry will come together in 2026 to develop shared capabilities and technologies to fight identity fraud and manage risk together. Visa will be central to this fight.

3. Stablecoins Hit Their Stride

Stablecoins – cryptocurrencies backed by fiat currency – are transforming a historically speculative asset into trusted global payment infrastructure. The potential for stablecoins to add to and complement the existing global payment ecosystem is enormous – especially for emerging markets and for cross-border. Thanks to the passage of the U.S. GENIUS Act and similar laws worldwide that established a regulatory framework, we are poised to hit escape velocity in 2026.

This year, we will see significant stablecoin growth in the following areas:

• Emerging markets with volatile local currencies and limited access to stable USD where stablecoins can serve as a store of value (e.g., Argentina)

• Cross-border money movement for B2B payments, B2C payouts, and P2P remittances, where current solutions can be more efficient by leveraging stablecoin technology

• Seamless movement between the fiat and crypto worlds leveraging Visa infrastructure. Crypto wallets with an associated Visa card are given unlimited payment reach, thereby enabling consumers to buy coffee at Starbucks backed by their stablecoin and crypto assets (Visa currently supports more than 130 stablecoin-linked card programs in over 40 countries)

• Settlement on the Visa network. Stablecoin-native clients can settle on the Visa network with USD and EUR stablecoins just like any other currency, and that will continue to scale.

4. Goodbye Manual Guest Checkout

Remember fumbling for your wallet, typing in your 16-digit card number, shipping addresses, expiration date and the ‘super-secret’ code (that is written on your card)? That era is finally becoming a relic. Just as smartphones replaced the need to remember phone numbers and search engines replaced remembering URLs, remembering your card details is giving way to easier options. Clunky multi-step guest checkout is being replaced by a single click. Buy buttons now live directly online – whether through digital wallets like Apple Pay or eCommerce platforms like Shopify. That means faster checkouts, fewer abandoned shopping carts, and less fraud. In 2026, manual entry guest checkout will go the way of the modem.

In fact, the share of Visa eCommerce transactions using manual entry guest checkout declined from almost half of transactions in 2019 to just 16 percent in 2025. Among Visa’s top 25 eCommerce sellers, it's already in the low single digits.

In many markets, guest checkout will completely vanish soon – thanks in part to the 16 billion Visa tokens that are enabling this change.

5. The Beginning of the End for Cash?

Nope. Not in 2026 or any time soon. Mark Twain famously quipped: “Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated”. The same can be said about cash. Paper money is not going to disappear any time soon since there is just so much of it still around the globe (~$11T). And this will fuel innovation and growth in digital payments in many countries for years to come.

However, the global cash curve is bending. 2026 will be the first year in history when half of the world's total consumer payments are made with card credentials. It took us a while to get here, but this is a great milestone.

This inflection point is being driven by innovations like tap-to-pay cards and mobile devices that are enabling the digitization of micro-transactions where cash was historically the only answer. Tapping your phone for that $1 bus ride or your card for the $2 coffee at the farmers market is consuming cash's last safe havens.

To further digitize cash, Visa is partnering with fintechs and digital apps around the world like WeChat Pay (China), M-Pesa (Kenya) and Mercado Pago (Latin America). We combine their local innovations with Visa's best-in-class capabilities in security, fraud, risk, dispute resolution, brand, trust, acceptance, and the unmatched scale of our global network – enabling digital commerce to grow securely and inclusively.

Some say “Cash is King”, but it is increasingly sharing its throne.

6. Predicting the Future Requires the Right Lens

With operations in more than 200 markets, Visa has a uniquely global vantage point – one that reveals just how diverse, fragmented, and dynamic the global payments landscape truly is. At first glance, the picture may seem completely random and daunting. However, if you look through the right lens, you can spot the signal through the noise.

At Visa, our lens is “market archetypes”, or country groupings that share a similar model for growth. We categorize groups of similar payments markets based on stage of development, infrastructure, consumer behavior, innovation, and regulations. Once you look through this lens, you can see that markets on opposite sides of the world often look like payments twins. They might not be on the same continent or speak the same language – but they share many of the same payments behaviors, risks and opportunities. And it is through this lens of archetypes that clear trends come into focus.

For example, Australia and India are both in our Asia Pacific region, but they don’t have much in common when it comes to payments. Australia is more similar to the Nordics, U.K. and Canada as they are all digitally advanced and cash light. Conversely, India has a lot of payment parallels with Brazil and Nigeria, as they each rely heavily on national real-time payments networks. This lens also shows – perhaps surprisingly – that Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico have more in common with each other than their geographic neighbors, as they are large mature economies with high potential for growth in digital payments.

Looked at through this lens, the trends become clear – and the predictions more accurate. In 2026, this approach will isolate new insights, enable new connections for our clients, and drive innovation and growth around the globe.