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.

International and commercial spending, along with value-added services, drove the network’s revenues.

Visa promises cardholders cash-back rewards in new accounts, but lacks the ability to enforce.

Amenify is pursuing a card-agnostic rewards structure, bucking the Bilt model.

The AI Platform Is Closer Than Some Rivals, but It Still Faces Barriers

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.

This FAQ addresses what commerce media is, how it differs from retail media, and where growth opportunities exist for advertisers in 2026.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, stablecoins, agentic commerce, and AI-driven rewards will reshape the payments industry. Providers need to bet early or risk being sidelined by faster, cheaper, and more intuitive payment experiences.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) will enable Visa Intelligence in its marketplace, bringing agentic commerce capabilities to AWS’s merchant list, per a press release. However, US consumers still have trepidation about letting bots complete purchases on their behalf—almost 70% of US adults are uninterested in testing out AI shoppers, per an EMARKETER and Civic Science survey. Major payment players hoping to benefit from agentic-driven volume need to develop incentives or roll out education materials to assure consumers that bot-driven shopping is safe and effective.

Some Capital One debit cardholders feel dissatisfied with the shift from Mastercard to the Discover network, per The Wall Street Journal. Taking a slow, comprehensive approach to changing card products is critical to maintaining cardholder trust and loyalty. Consumers need assurance that their card will be accepted wherever they shop. Competing issuers can flex their cards’ stability through the Mastercard-Visa duopoly or emphasize their broadening acceptance internationally, like American Express. As travel becomes a tentpole feature of premium rewards, emphasizing acceptance in far-flung locales can entice high-spending wealthy consumers to stick with issuers on major network providers, instead of using a smaller competitor.

Visa and Mastercard reached a settlement with merchants to lower interchange fees in the US, ending a 20-year battle in the courts, per SEC filings. The networks will lower their average effective interchange rate by 0.1 percentage point for five years and cap standard US credit rates at 125 basis points. Small businesses trying to maximize their bottom lines by declining premium cards need to incentivize their consumers to switch to a compatible payment method. Offering discounts or loyalty programs contingent on standard credit cards, debit, or cash can help mitigate dissatisfaction while changing their consumers’ payment behavior patterns.

Capital One will issue T-Mobile’s first credit card, according to Bloomberg—but it won’t run on Capital One’s recently acquired Discover network. Whether T-Mobile snubbed Discover or Capital One wasn’t ready to integrate its credit card products with the newly acquired network, the optics of running a new card on Visa aren’t great. But Visa and Mastercard shouldn’t exactly call this a win. While Discover's total volume is still an order of magnitude lower than that of Mastercard or Visa, incremental gains will lead to real lost volume opportunities for the duopoly.

Mastercard is reportedly nearing a deal to acquire Zerohash for as much as $2 billion, per Fortune. Zerohash provides infrastructure to connect fiat payment systems with crypto and stablecoins. We can expect Visa to pursue a big crypto acquisition in short order. Whether they see it as an existential threat or not, networks are waking up to the fact that crypto is here to stay—and they need to prove to investors and stakeholders that they’re taking it seriously.

Visa and Mastercard reported strong growth in their most recent earnings. Visa’s net revenues increased 12% YoY in its Q4 2025, per its earnings release. Mastercard’s net revenues grew 17% YoY in Q3, per its earnings release. Lower-income consumers are more sensitive to tariff-induced inflation and other economic events. If lower- and medium-tier cardholders pull back on spending, their premium counterparts who are more insulated from economic pain can keep spending afloat. Issuers are following the same strategy: Citi, Chase, and American Express all launched or revamped premium cards this year.