Welcome to 2026: Here’s a quick recap of everything payments-related that you missed over the holiday season.

The news: US holiday spend remained strong. Mastercard’s SpendingPulse reported 3.9% YoY retail spending growth, while Visa disclosed an increase of 4.2% YoY. In-store shopping led the surge, dominating 73% of all US holiday shopping, per Visa. 

What this means: While ecommerce picks up considerable steam, in-store shopping remains dominant for US consumers. Retail spending stayed in line with our holiday forecast, which predicted 4.2% growth—the slowest we’ve tracked since 2009. 

The news: Fiserv sealed partnerships with Mastercard’s Agent Pay and Visa’s Intelligence Commerce to enable agentic commerce for Clover and Fiserv merchants. This brings Fiserv back up to speed with peers like Stripe, PayPal, and Klarna that have already given merchants access to agentic commerce through partnerships and proprietary protocols. 

What this means: Major payment providers are eager to give their merchants access to agentic tools as consumers warm to AI. But while most consumers are comfortable using AI to research or discover products, they still need convincing to fully delegate their purchases to a bot.

The news: Crypto trading platform Zoomex launched the Zoomex Card, which grants cardholders access to a global multicurrency bank account that’s connected to traditional payments rails and crypto ramps. 

What this means: The passage of the GENIUS Act has exploded opportunities for crypto as regulatory clarity and a crypto-friendly executive made the US more on-chain friendly. Targeting of cross-border payments narrows in on cryptocurrency’s most promising use case: reducing fees and increasing speed of international payments and remittances.