AI in the Payments Customer Life Cycle H2 2026

How Providers Must Adapt as AI Transforms Discovery, Engagement, and Checkout

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About This Report
As AI moves deeper into consumers’ financial decisions, it’s changing how they discover payment products, decide which to use, and interact with providers.
Table of Contents

AI is changing how consumers find payment products, get financial guidance, and choose to pay. As AI plays a bigger role in these decisions, payment providers need new ways to stay visible and win customers.

Key Question: How will AI transform the payments customer life cycle, and how should payment providers respond?

Key Stat: Consumers want AI to help them get the most value from their credit cards: 47% of card prospects cited a tool that recommends how to maximize rewards as one of the AI-powered features they would find most valuable in a card app, per our August 2026 survey.

authors

Grace Broadbent

Contributors

Chris Keating
Director, Research
Madan Kumar
Copy Editor
Na Li
Director, Primary Research
Tiffani Montez
Principal Analyst
Emma Noyes
Senior Graphic Designer, Data Visualization
Jennifer Pearson
VP, Research
Myra Thomas
Banking Analyst
Matt Torpey
Senior Data Visualization Editor
Johann Valderrama
Data Visualization Editor
Julia Woolever
Director, Report Editing
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