Visa and Mastercard reached a new settlement with merchants to lower fees in the US this November—another attempt to end a roughly 20-year fight in the courts, per SEC filings. The modest interchange reductions and new ability to steer customers away from higher-fee cards offer meaningful cost relief for small and midsize retailers that consumers may be more willing to support by using another card. However, those concessions are unlikely to move the needle for large national chains. They don’t materially change their economics, nor do they address the fundamental issue that networks and issuers still hold most of the pricing power.

2025 was a big year for cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency payment users grew 24.8%, to 4.9 million US adults, per our forecast. Between institutional buy-in and unprecedented support at the highest levels of the US government, the crypto market hit record highs—before plummeting in the final months of the year. Crypto gained mainstream momentum, but its volatility hasn’t changed. For banks and crypto infrastructures, this unpredictability kneecaps efforts to integrate crypto as an accepted currency at the point-of-sale.