The news: Shopify partnered with Coinbase and Stripe so customers can pay with the USDC stablecoin at checkout. Our take: Coinbase is the biggest winner in this partnership. Cryptocurrency needs to gain traction with a wide merchant network to accelerate its use, and Shopify represents a huge score for Base.

The news: Global Payments rolled out a retail point-of-sale (POS) system under its Genius platform targeting small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Our take: Despite that clout, as other merchant service providers also diversify their offerings through verticalized software, hardware, and partnership integrations, Global Payments’ Genius will enter a crowded POS space with its offerings nearly indistinguishable from Stripe’s, Square’s, or Toast’s hardware and software lineups.

Tariff uncertainty, billion-dollar merger and acquisition deals, and a jump in social commerce will create new dynamics in the payments industry in H2 2025. Burgeoning tech like agentic AI and stablecoins will further shake up the space.

This decision feeds into the rising enthusiasm for stablecoin as the future of payments.

It’s is betting that hardware rollouts and vertically integrated offerings can stave off competitors.

The fintech company implements globally conscious strategies under economic volatility and new political tailwinds.

In-store payments provide a new growth avenue for BNPL providers facing slower industrywide volume growth

As hype over the asset class explodes, players want to capitalize on early-mover advantages

Tying up with DoorDash gives the BNPL provider a massive volume opportunity

The explosion of softPOS is reshaping the POS landscape and forcing hardware and software providers to pivot

The company will lean on AI and stablecoins to maintain its momentum

Consumers are slowly making changes to how they pay at checkout. We look at the top seven payment methods and delve into what’s pushing forward and detracting from their growth.

The solution will let the network capitalize on the quickly expanding creator economy

Payment provider innovation and regulatory changes are setting a long-term growth runway for cryptocurrency payments. But providers will still need to overcome low merchant acceptance and a sense of mistrust before crypto can go mainstream.

Major payment players like PayPal and Visa that invested in them are likely celebrating this regulatory movement

The tie-up brings Klarna to more merchants' checkout pages without the need for individual merchant partnerships, helping it save time and money and more quickly ramp up its payments volume

SpaceX, OpenAI, and others are choosing private funding over public markets to safeguard innovation, avoid scrutiny, and maintain competitive advantages.

Companies implemented the tech for hyperpersonalization, AI chatbots, fraud prevention, and other use cases

Payment players clearly believe in the long-term success of crypto payments despite limited adoption