In 2026, economic uncertainty is quietly reshaping consumer payment behavior, driving shifts across cards, cash, BNPL, and emerging alternatives as households adapt how they manage spending and access liquidity.

Consumer spending remained strong, but the network is losing its hold on Capital One’s credit program.

This FAQ addresses what financial services marketers, strategists, and insights professionals need to know about credit card trends, payment networks, and marketing opportunities in 2026.

Mastercard bets AI recommendations are the clearest near-term use case for banking clients.

Supporting Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol signals a deeper bet on agentic commerce and AI-driven payments.

PayPal rolled out Transaction Graph Insights & Measurement at CES to gives advertisers and merchants a clearer, cross-merchant view of how people actually shop and purchase—and early results suggest meaningful impact.

US holiday shopping remained strong, Fiserv pursued agentic commerce, and Zoomex launched a crypto-backed credit card.

In 2026, commerce will thread itself even more tightly into the platforms consumers already use, whether they're watching TV, scrolling TikTok, or browsing a retailer’s site. Streamers will hunt for new revenues beyond subscriptions and ads, fashion shoppers will polarize toward luxury or low-cost, and TikTok Shop will transition from experiment to expectation. Meanwhile, creators will embed more directly into retail environments as brands seek safer, more strategic partnerships.

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.

The automotive dashboard is evolving into a media hub. By 2029, 203 million connected car drivers will give advertisers access to captive audiences through AI commerce, in-vehicle ads, charging sessions, and rideshare integrations.

Artificial intelligence is working its way into every facet of the US economy, and the payments industry is no exception. While the changes to consumers’ payment behavior will be gradual, providers need to act now, according to our 2026 AI in the Payments Customer Life Cycle report. Providers need to overcome critical issues like data fragmentation, but a well executed AI strategy can help providers maintain control over product discovery and streamline checkout.

As retailers prepare for next year, they acknowledge that convenience has evolved from a value proposition to a structural shift in how all of retail operates. We asked leaders across retail media, digital identity, payments, mobility, and connected commerce, and they agreed that convenience will continue to change throughout the next year as expectations shift and AI eliminates friction.

Mastercard and LoanPro launched Loan on Card, a personal loan service for consumers and small businesses delivered through virtual and physical cards, per a press release. Loan on Card provides a patch for issuers trying to retain customers that otherwise would have fled to BNPL platforms for larger loans to avoid revolving debt on credit card transactions they couldn’t pay off within a month. BNPL platforms can still boast direct connections at the point-of-sale and the fact that even longer-term BNPL loans don’t appear on customers’ credit scores. Banks need to make sure their loans are just as accessible when consumers are shopping for bigger purchases—with real-time underwriting.

2025 challenged many of retail’s long-held assumptions. What looked like familiar patterns often turned out to be something different entirely, and in the process, a few key trends were either missed or misread by brands trying to make sense of shifting shopper behavior. Here are three trends from 2025 that were either overlooked or misunderstood, and why they will matter in the year ahead.

Walmart wants discretion to refuse cards based on their issuer at the point-of-sale, per an objection filed in response to the proposed settlement to end the decadeslong interchange fee legal battle. While new types of fee agreements with banks remain entirely speculative at this point, it’s unclear whether a patchwork quilt of deals with issuers would benefit Walmart. Discontinuing acceptance of certain issuers at the POS will likely cause just as much friction for consumers as the purportedly “useless” changes to the honor all cards rule, especially if Walmart stands alone in its issuer blacklist.

As consumers grow more comfortable with using AI, retail industry leaders see 2026 as a pivotal year in shaping how the emerging technology disrupts the way people shop.

Klarna launched the Agentic Product Protocol, an open standard that makes products on the internet discoverable and understandable by AI agents, per a press release. All payment providers need to meet consumer demand for AI-powered commerce that allows them to save time and money on shopping. However, to speed up adoption of agent-driven checkout, platforms need to ensure safety and privacy with AI agent transactions: 65.5% of US consumers still have misgivings about agent-led payments, per Omnisend.

AI-assisted shopping and advertising will surge as the Gulf states support innovation, but a creator content boom will cause tensions around censorship.

Visa will offer stablecoin settlement in Circle’s USDC for its US network, per a press release. Visa and Mastercard are investing in crypto to preserve their dominance in the US payment ecosystem. Crypto-based payments have been slow to catch on in the US—we forecast just 1.8% of US adults will transact with crypto this year. It’s unclear which components of crypto will enter the mainstream, so a strategy like Visa’s, where it invests in everything from stablecoin-issuing sandboxes and crypto settlement to cards that transact over traditional rails but pay out rewards in crypto, could position it to maintain its edge wherever crypto catches on.

In 2026, commerce media will shift toward the core mechanics of shopping, as retailers reorganize, stores become high-impact media showcases, agentic AI opens new monetization, and financial platforms move closer to shoppable environments.