2025 in review: As 2025 wraps, we’re taking stock of what changed in the payments industry and assessing how our predictions we made last year panned out.

The main trends we anticipated to see in 2025 included:

• Real time “pay by bank” payments land at online checkout.
• Mobile wallets will adopt NFC technology.
• Flexible credentials will give consumers their preferred payment methods in a single card.
• Financial media networks (FMN) will take off.

Here are the predictions we got right: 

Prediction 1: A major mobile wallet will pilot an Apple NFC partnership in 2025.

• We were correct: PayPal launched tap-to-pay in Germany, and Klarna debuted contactless payments across 14 European markets.
• Notably, these updates have yet to hit the US, where partnerships with Apple Pay may dampen consumer demand for alternative wallets on the iPhone. Consumer habits have already been formed within the Apple ecosystem—and users may be reluctant to exit it.

Prediction 2: Any Apple NFC partnership will spur mobile wallet usage overall.

• Even without direct NFC partnerships in the US, 31.2% of US consumers used a digital wallet in-store this September, per a PYMNTS Intelligence report. These gains were likely won through Apple Pay integrations and the numerous buy now, pay later (BNPL) partnerships sealed in 2024 and 2025.
• Cash App, Google Pay, and PayPal have more than doubled their share of users since 2023, which could snowball into an even larger share. They’re targeting more management of users’ financial lives, such as subscriptions, order tracking, and ticketing.

Prediction 3: BNPL providers will race to adopt the flexible digital credentials.

• With both Klarna and Affirm’s BNPL-enabled debit cards running on Visa’s Flexible Credentials, BNPL players did seize on cards in 2025 to score more in-store volume. 
• Both cards have accumulated significant usership and reputations as growth engines: The Klarna Card’s gross merchandise volume soared 92% YoY in Q3 2025, with 1 million Klarna users signing up within 11 weeks of its launch.

Prediction 4: Leading US mobile wallets will maintain a competitive edge over flexible BNPL cards.

• Apple Pay has remained dominant in the US, as consumers built payment habits around iPhone functionality before Apple gave up exclusive control of its NFC technology. 
• But growth from competing wallets suggests Apple Pay could face serious challenges in the future, as rivals develop incentives and strategies to encourage defecting from Apple’s ecosystem.

Prediction 5: Payment providers with FMNs will double down to make them indispensable to advertisers.

• The launch of PayPal’s Ad Manager was a play to make the fintech indispensable to SMBs, letting merchants create their own retail media networks and generate new revenue streams. 
• Mastercard, Amex, and Western Union launched their own FMNs as well, showing major payments providers’ urgency to capture the massive amount of money in ads with their unique access to consumers’ payment activity.

Prediction 6: Other payment providers will transform existing reward programs into FMNs to capture ad spending.

• US Bank offered cardholders exclusive discounts with select merchants through its shopping portal, increasing the likelihood of purchases happening through US Bank cards, due to the card-specific deals. The program wasn’t billed as a financial media network, but training cardholders to check their bank apps for deals could pave the way for a successful FMN launch. 
• Klarna also offered specialized deals through merchants for its members over the course of Cyber Five—in addition to pushing its merchant-funded 0% interest loans, which Klarna has said will be a big priority moving forward.