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Back in January, the Glenbrook team kicked off 2026 with a set of predictions about the trends most likely to shape the payments industry. Six months later, we’re taking a look at what’s actually happened, where our forecasts have held up, and where the market has surprised us. Listen to the full Payments on Fire podcast episode or explore our recap below.

While the specifics vary by topic, one theme has remained consistent: payments innovation isn’t slowing down. From agentic commerce and stablecoins to instant payments, fraud, and banking regulation, the industry continues to evolve rapidly – although not always in the ways we expected.

Agentic Commerce: Progress, But Still Early

At the start of the year, we predicted that agentic commerce would be more important for product discovery than for actual payment execution. That assessment largely holds true.

While significant work is underway to build payment infrastructure for autonomous agents, mainstream transaction volume remains minimal. Merchants are still focused on making product catalogs discoverable and understandable by AI systems, while broader questions around trust, liability, attribution, loyalty, and dispute management remain unresolved.

Key Developments

• Product discovery remains the primary agentic commerce use case
• Open-source protocols and standards are beginning to emerge
• Shopify, Google, and other platforms are helping drive infrastructure development
• Consumer willingness to delegate purchases to AI agents is growing, but adoption remains limited
• Merchant concerns around liability, disputes, customer ownership, and economics continue to slow adoption
• B2B use cases may arrive faster than consumer applications, particularly in accounts payable, reconciliation, and invoice processing
• Finance teams are beginning to deploy agentic workflows inside structured business processes

Tokenization: An Essential Building Block

The rise of agentic commerce continues to reinforce the importance of payment tokenization.

Rather than allowing AI agents to access full card credentials, the industry is moving toward permissioned, auditable payment credentials that can be tightly controlled and monitored.

Key Developments

• Tokenization remains a foundational security requirement for agentic payments
• Card networks continue to view tokenization as a strategic priority
• Agentic commerce is accelerating conversations around credential security
• Future agentic ecosystems will likely support multiple payment methods – not just cards – including faster payments, BNPL, and potentially stablecoins

Stablecoins: Plenty of Activity, Still Searching for Scale

Stablecoins remain one of the most discussed topics in payments. Regulatory progress in 2025 and a steady stream of product announcements have increased industry confidence, but widespread payment adoption remains elusive.

Most stablecoin activity today still occurs within crypto ecosystems rather than real-world payment flows.

Key Developments

• The GENIUS Act provided greater regulatory clarity (2025)
• Infrastructure providers across payments, banking, and fintech continue launching stablecoin initiatives
• Cross-border use cases remain the most promising area for adoption
• Money transfer operators are exploring stablecoins for internal settlement and liquidity management
• Stablecoin providers are working to abstract away blockchain complexity for end users
• Emerging markets continue to show the strongest real-world demand, particularly where access to US dollars is valuable
• The industry is still waiting for a breakout stablecoin payment use case

Tokenized Deposits: The Banking Sector’s Response

As stablecoins gain momentum, banks continue exploring tokenized deposits as an alternative approach to digital money that maintains the role of bank deposits.

While still in the experimentation phase, several large initiatives suggest growing institutional interest.

Key Developments

• Major banks are collaborating on private blockchain networks for tokenized deposits
• The BIS’s newly completed Project Agora explores interoperability between tokenized deposits and tokenized central bank money (wholesale CBDC)
• Financial institutions are testing 24/7 settlement capabilities
• Data privacy, confidentiality, cybersecurity, and resilience remain major challenges
• Institutional experimentation is accelerating, but meaningful transaction volume remains limited

Cross-Border Payments and Instant Payment Interoperability

The industry’s long-term goal of faster, cheaper, and more transparent cross-border payments remains a work in progress.

Several initiatives made meaningful progress during the first half of the year, although measurable impacts on cost and accessibility are still emerging.

Key Developments

• Indonesia became the sixth jurisdiction to join Nexus
• Nexus selected a technical operator and continues implementation work ahead of a planned 2027 launch
• The European Central Bank is evaluating a potential connection to Nexus
• Swift is exploring retail-focused cross-border payment capabilities
• Brazil’s Pix expanded merchant payment capabilities into Argentina
• Transparency around fees and FX costs remains a growing area of focus
• Stablecoins continue to influence the broader conversation around cross-border payments

Interchange Litigation: Moving Forward, But Not Finished

The long-running Visa and Mastercard merchant litigation took another step forward this year, but the debate over card acceptance costs is far from over.

A recent court ruling granted preliminary approval to the latest settlement, although merchant groups continue to oppose it.

Key Developments

• Preliminary approval was granted for the latest settlement proposal
• The settlement includes interchange relief and long-term caps on certain card categories
• Merchant groups are expected to continue pursuing appeals
• Many merchants argue that overall acceptance costs continue to rise despite interchange reductions
• Attention may increasingly shift toward legislative and regulatory approaches

Surcharging: Diverging Global Approaches

As merchant costs remain under scrutiny, surcharging continues to generate debate around who ultimately pays for payments.

The first half of the year highlighted growing differences between the United States and other markets.

Key Developments

• Surcharging continues to expand across the US market
• More retail software platforms are embedding compliant surcharge functionality
• Consumers remain overwhelmingly negative toward surcharges
• Australia is moving in the opposite direction by banning surcharging later this year
• Regulators in some markets increasingly view surcharges as ineffective at steering payment choice

Fraud and VAMP: New Rules, New Challenges

Fraud management remains one of the industry’s most dynamic areas.

While fraud rates as a percentage of volume continue to improve, merchants are adjusting to Visa’s Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP) and preparing for new risks associated with agentic commerce.

Key Developments

• Global card fraud rates continue to decline modestly
• AI-powered fraud detection tools are improving performance
• VAMP’s volume-based approach has changed merchant risk calculations
• Fraud reports and disputes now contribute to a combined metric
• Merchants face increased pressure from tightening VAMP thresholds
• Early agentic commerce activity is creating new challenges around dispute attribution and fraud detection, such as legitimate AI agents sometimes being misclassified as malicious bots

Banking Regulation and the Return of De Novo Charters

One of the more significant developments of 2026 has been renewed interest in bank charter applications.

While regulatory standards remain high, the environment appears more supportive of new entrants than it has in recent years.

Key Developments

• Bank charter applications continue to increase
• Fintech firms are pursuing national bank, trust bank, and industrial loan company charters
• Sponsored banking remains important for earlier-stage fintechs
• Regulators appear focused on expanding access rather than pursuing broad deregulation
• Stablecoin regulation may drive additional charter activity later this year
• The US is experimenting with multiple charter pathways rather than adopting a single model similar to Europe’s e-money licensing framework

Looking Ahead

At the midpoint of 2026, the payments industry finds itself in a familiar position: significant innovation, substantial experimentation, and plenty of unanswered questions.

Agentic commerce and stablecoins continue to dominate headlines, but practical adoption remains a work in progress. Meanwhile, infrastructure modernization, regulatory evolution, and cross-border interoperability efforts continue to advance behind the scenes.

If the first half of the year is any indication, the second half won’t be slowing down anytime soon.