Every payments conference has an AI panel this year. Sometimes more than one. Occasionally several. Most begin with the same question: how will AI transform payments?
After moderating a panel at ACI Worldwide’s Payments Unleashed Conference in London last week, I’m starting to think this maybe the wrong question for 2026.
At this stage in the technology’s evolution, it’s better to ask where is AI already creating measurable value. On this, there was remarkable agreement among the panellists. Fraud.
Whether it was Nvidia talking about Revolut’s Transaction Foundation Model, ACI discussing self-learning fraud models or PayPal describing how AI is improving internal decision making, nobody questioned that AI investment in fraud prevention is producing genuine returns today. Rule-based systems are being replaced with models that continuously learn from new transaction data, improving detection while reducing false positives.
The second area where AI is already delivering results is less obvious but equally important. Payment routing.
Using AI to decide which acquirer to use, when to retry failed authorisations or how to optimise approval rates is producing measurable commercial benefits. Unlike some of the more speculative AI use cases, fraud and routing are straightforward optimisation problems which the industry has been working on for years. Better performance is easily measured and delivers clear cash benefits.
What next? Much of the excitement today around AI centres on agentic commerce. The popular image is one of computers buying from other computers with no human involvement.
Brenden Lane from PayPal argued that’s not what we’re seeing today. Instead, AI is helping consumers decide what to buy rather than buying it entirely on their behalf. Travel and consumer electronics were the standout examples. AI can compare itineraries, explain technical specifications and narrow the choices before the customer makes the final decision. In other words, AI is improving shopping more than it is automating payments.
Erich Litch from ACI agreed. “We automatically jump to the payment,” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff that’s way more valuable in the shopping experience.”
If AI can remove friction from product discovery, supplier selection or travel planning, then the payment simply becomes the final confirmation of a decision that has already been made. The question for payment companies is whether the really changes much in their world. This could just be business as usual and, with some minor modifications, exiting card rails will work just fine.
But investment is certainly growing. Nvidia pointed to rapidly increasing AI budgets and a surge in new application releases. But there was broad agreement that agentic commerce remains at an early stage. Brendan Lane was explicit that it won’t replace traditional commerce this year, while Erich Litch compared today’s adoption levels with online banking in 2000. Interesting, certainly. Mainstream, not yet. And the lesson from 2000 is that the early innovators – remember Egg? – didn’t hit the jackpot.
Any discussion about AI can’t ignore public policy. The USA and Europe are facing in different directions with the UK rather caught in the middle. Rather than calling for sweeping new AI regulation, Lord Chris Holmes argued for technology-neutral, principles-based legislation that can survive changes in technology. It is an attractive idea, although agreeing those principles may prove more harder than writing them down. And there’s an open question whether any regulatory regime can move at the same speed as today’s product roadmaps. Sensible rules today could become dangerous tomorrow.
Less contentiously, Holmes reminded the audience that many current AI projects will fail, not because the technology is inadequate, but because they lack a clear business purpose. This is a common problem when CEOs get excited about a new technology and demand something they can put in a press release.
I don’t think the payments industry struggles to adopt new technology. The challenge is always about identifying where technology genuinely creates value and balancing investment against future returns. It’s looking increasingly like agentic commerce won’t hit prime time in the next year or two. Payments businesses might be best advised to focus investment on fraud and routing until the business case for agentic commerce is clear.
Worldline’s half-year results disappointed investors as its core merchant services division once again underperformed the broader European market. Net revenue in the division fell 7%, while EBITDA dropped 19%, prompting a colossal €4.1 billion impairment, a remarkable figure considering Worldline’s current market cap is just under €1 billion.
The bad news kept coming. Worldline took an additional €142 million write-down on its minority stake in Ingenico, S&P has downgraded its bonds and the Financial Times raises questions about whether the parent company has ready access to cash held in subsidiaries.
The sales slump in merchant services is blamed on a tough SMB environment, particularly in Germany and the Benelux, where Worldline is struggling against the “Tap Pack” of SumUp, Viva.com, myPOS, Flatpay as well as ISV’s offering payments bundled with their retail or restaurant software.
Still, there are some glimmers of hope. External auditors brought in following the “Dirty Payments” scandal reported no further issues. Worldline has successfully offloaded its mobility and e-ticketing unit for €410m, and there are signs of life in markets like Australia, Italy, and Greece. The company also reports solid progress in platform consolidation and has re-entered the UK acquiring market. Worldline’s new management team remains upbeat, targeting a return to growth in 2026, though that promise may sound familiar.
Adyen’s H1 results were quite a contrast. Worldwide revenues grew 20% while EBITDA margins remained above 50%. Very few companies can boast such strong financial results but the stock price fell 18% as the Amsterdam-based acquirer reduced H2 guidance citing the impact of Trump’s tariffs on its Asia-Pacific clients selling goods to the USA. This is thought relate to Shein and Temu suffering from the imposition of customs duties on small packages.S
Despite years of effort and tens of millions of dollars in incentive payments to PSP’s, Discover’s global acceptance network had made little progress in attracting volume. Capital One, Discover’s new owner, is now looking to create a rival to American Express. The CEO said “there are only 2 banks in the world with their own network, and we are one of them. We are moving to capitalize on this rare and valuable opportunity. We need to achieve greater international acceptance and then build a global network brand.”
Dojo has established itself as arguably the UK’s leading SME payments provider but 2024/25 results show growth is slowing – revenue up just 11% and merchant numbers flat. Successful launches in Italy and Spain are critical to the future of the group because, despite a new $190m equity injection, Dojo must run fast to escape the interest payments on its £649 million debt mountain. Read more on the Business of Payments blog.
Today’s CEO normally boasts about using AI to cut staff numbers but FlatPay, the fast growing Danish-HQ’d PF, is delighted to have reached 1000 employees. The hiring spree is linked to new market entry into France and Italy where it is signing 2,400 merchants a month and expects to capture 3% share within 12 months.
The German Sparkasse are some of the few incumbent banks making a success of payments today. Revenue at S-Payment – which provides merchant services to the 353 member banks – was up 17% in 2024, the terminal estate grew 5% and girocard transactions increased 12% – well ahead of the market. Read more on the Business of Payments blog.
Secupay is another German payment business producing good numbers. Based in Dresden, Secupay is the country’s largest remaining independent PSP and processes c.€2bn annually from over 300,000 merchants. 2024 sales almost doubled to €19m. Secupay has recently secured full scheme membership and has built an acquiring capability using Silverflow software.
Global Payments stock price improved after management reassured investors on the near-term outlook which included Q2 results showing European revenues up 6%, flattered by the weaker dollar.
Global is performing best in central Europe. NBG Pay, the joint-venture with National Bank of Greece inherited from the acquisition of EVO Payments, processed €14bn of in 2024, grew net revenues 25% to €40m and reported a maiden operating profit. Global has entered Croatia with the acquisition of the acquiring unit of Erste Card Club,through its existing Vienna-based JV with Erste Bank.
Although Global has reported positive progress with regulatory matters in the US relating to the acquisition of Worldpay, it’s not commented on the situation in the UK where the combined business will probably have a >40% share of the acquiring market. Competition authorities in London have not yet decided whether to mount a full investigation.
In a busy month for payments-related fundraising, here are some highlights:
Bumper, based in Sheffield in the UK, secured an additional £8m from the venture arms of Jaguar Land Rover, Suzuki, Porsche and others to expand its car repair software and payments platform to new European markets including Germany, Ireland, Netherlands and Spain. Bumper bought Cocoon Payments, an open banking specialist earlier this year.
Appcharge, a Tel Aviv based merchant-of-record specialising in helping mobile games publishers take money directly from consumers (avoiding app store charges) has raised $58m, bringing total financing to $89m. Appcharge claims $500m annual payment volume and growing quickly.
Reckon.ai, from Porto, has raised a further €5.1m (total of €8.5m) to grow its business selling autonomous smart cabinets – best thought of as walk-in vending machines where shoppers pay via an app or by tapping a payment card before entering.
Handwave, based in Latvia has raised $4.2m for its biometric payment products – hardware and software. You first must link your card credential to your palm print and then you can pay by putting your hand on a special reader. Palm payments make sense for saunas and swimming pools but, otherwise may be a solution looking for a problem.
Papercut, based in Sofia and led by ex-SumUp execs, has raised €2m for its BNPL aggregation service for SMEs. Embed is providing the payment infrastructure and money movement.
Turning to corporate activity, Payroc, a highly acquisitive US acquirer/processor, has bought Bluesnap, an online PSP and payment gateway based in Dublin and Boston. Payroc processes $115bn from 190,000 merchants and the deal gives it significant reach into Europe for the first time.
PayRetailers, a Barcelona-based PSP specialising in cross-border sales into Latin America, has acquired Celeris, an Amsterdam-based payment orchestrator. The deal should help PayRetailers improve authorisation rates.
Finally, Nexi has retained its partnership deal with Crédit Agricole in Italy, despite the bank’s French parent having bought a 7% stake in Worldline in 2024. This will come as a relief to Nexi’s management as it has been under pressure from Worldline for bank partnership in Italy. The Crédit Agricole deals covers processing for 100,000 POS terminals and 3m payment cards.
Scheming
Q2 2025 was another storming quarter for the schemes in Europe. Combined Visa and Mastercard payment volume rose 18% although the headline figure was flattered by the weak dollar. But 12% in Euro terms is still very impressive and reflects 10% growth in transactions and 2% uplift in ATV.
Mastercard and Visa have been neck and neck for a while but in Q2 Mastercard processed (marginally) more volume in Europe than Visa for the first time. This will be cause for a small celebration in Waterloo although Visa still managed a slightly higher number of transactions.
Cross‑border volumes remain robust for both networks; despite Adyen’s issues, neither reports geopolitics hurting demand with Visa’s CEO saying: “We see no meaningful impact from tariffs.”
Europe’s reliance on Visa/Mastercard – 13 of 20 eurozone countries use them for most POS payments – is spurring work on the digital euro (see below) and the European Payment Initiative’s wero wallet.
In Germany, the savings banks, which have integrated wero into the Sparkasse app, now claim 1m active users. For now, wero only works for P2P payments but eCommerce is coming later this year and merchants will certainly like the pricing. S-Payment is proposing 0.77% + gateway charges: rather cheaper than cards or PayPal. And, unlike open banking payments, wero comes with a payment guarantee.
Wero is also live in France although pitched as something rather cooler and cosmopolitan.
Turning to domestic schemes: Poland’s Blik, which has Mastercard as a key shareholder, posted standout 2024 results with revenue up 93% to €98m (~€0.06/tx) and profit at €48m.
Growth continued in H1 2025: total transactions were up 24% including almost €2bn of POS volume, managed through a virtual Mastercard which also allows Poles to use Blik at terminals abroad. Feel the chemistry as Mme Curie buys supplies in Paris.
Customers of Caixa Bank, BBVA and Santander can use Bizum, the fast-growing Spanish mobile payment wallet at POS for the first time. In contrast to Blik, the Bizum user experience is clunky – shoppers need to type their phone number into terminal to be sent a payment link.
Brazil’s Pix mobile wallet has attracted global attention for its stratospheric growth but seems to be taking share from cash, not cards. Since Pix launched in 2020, card transactions have been growing faster than ever – an annual growth rate of 20% compared to 14% in the previous years. Despite this, Donald Trump has launched an investigation into Brazil’s unfair trade practices including Pix which he says discriminates against Visa and Mastercard. Brazil’s President responded: “PIX is Brazil’s. We will not accept attacks on PIX, which is the patrimony of our people.”
ISV
The shift in payments distribution from banks to software vendors (ISVs) is one the biggest disruptions in the industry and is delivering big numbers to processors that have invested in building the right relationships.
Shopify, which provides websites for over 5m merchants worldwide, has aggressively shifted volume from 3rd party gateways (chosen by the merchant) to its in-house product – Shopify Payments. Processed via Stripe, Shopify Payments’ volume was up 38% in Q2 to $41bn and accounts for two-thirds of all sales made by Shopify merchants.
Stripe tends to be the partner of choice for eCommerce ISVs but Adyen’s platforms business is the go-to acquirer for vendors serving online and store-based channels. Latest results show Adyen’s payment volume from platforms up 80% to €27bn in H1 2025 from 255,000 terminals. 31 of its partners now process over €1bn each annually.
Adyen’s deployment capability in multiple countries and across channels is very attractive to retail software specialists that need a single solution for their multi-national clients. Sitoo from Sweden is a great example. From Sitoo’s perspective the key USP of partnering with Adyen is an increase in first-time help desk resolutions and reduction in time taken to troubleshoot faults.
Other payment processors want a piece of the action. Worldpay is finally taking the European ISV market seriously with some strong marketing support for the launch of Worldpay for Platforms. The proposition is based on the acquisition of Payrix in 2022
Electronic Payments, has bought Handpoint the Iceland-based mPOS vendor. Handpoint, which claims 100 ISV partners, processes $2bn annually from 18,000 devices in Europe and the USA. Electronic Payments is known for giving generous commercial terms to its partners (URL = www.residuals.com) and could be a disruptive new entrant to many European markets.
New shopping
Agentic commerce has potential to transform online shopping; replacing the established online commerce journey which begins with a Google search and ends at a finely honed checkout page with a chat-based conversation between you and an agent that has delegated authority to spend money with your payment card.
Instead, Shopify has given each of its 5m merchants a “chatbot accessible storefront API”and launched Shopify Catalog which aggregates products across all Shopify merchants to enable AI agents to search, recommend and (in the near future) transact. Shopify claims 12.3% conversion on AI-assisted shopping compared to 3.1% the old-fashioned way.
The payment industry has begun to launch product. Worldpay has introduced a Know Your Agent (KYA) framework to help merchants determine whether an agent is good (working for a genuine shopper with funds to complete the purchase) or bad (working for a scammer). Trulioo, the global ID vendor, is behind the product and has a helpful white paper here.
Open banking
Industry commentators have focused on the positive aspects of the UK’s National Payment Vision, notably a commitment to form a new delivery company, create a payment guarantee and find a commercial model that rewards all market participants. These all may take some time. Meanwhile, investors worry whether the open banking industry – suffering from low volumes and lower margins – can remain solvent long enough to see the fruits of these endeavours.
One example is Ordo, a high profile open banking startup which featured in last year’s Fintech 40. Ordo was bought by Neonomics of Norway in 2023 but the new owners have given up on UK open banking and Ordo has ceased trading. Writing on LinkedIn, Neonomics CEO said VRP (the open banking equivalent to direct debit) had been too slow to arrive resulting in a UK market size of just c.30m transactions/month. This is not enough to sustain an industry.
Thanks to partnerships with FIS and Visa, and backed by blue-chip investors including NAB, Citi and Rapyd, Banked – another high profile open banking start-up – will be well positioned if/when A2A merchant payments become mainstream. Meanwhile, 2024 accounts show that Banked generated just £700K revenue and will likely need yet more capital to supplement the £55m already raised.
On the positive side, it’s increasingly common to see open banking offered at checkout. Ryanair, working with TrueLayer, has started putting “pay by bank” first on its payment page as you can see below.
Open banking’s current lack of consumer protection will aways be an issue in travel payments. Meagan Johnson gives an example of an A2A transaction for which neither Air France, Trustly or Monzo will take responsibility. Next time, she says she will use a card.
It’s clear that open banking needs “scheme rules” that give clear guidelines for managing disputes. Following two recent product launches, it’s increasingly likely these will be card scheme rules. Following the announcement of Visa Protect earlier this year, Mastercard has followed suit with A2A Protect. Early adopters include NatWest, Santander and Monzo in the UK.
Crypto corner
Plans for the digital euro are accelerating. Regulators already worried about European over-dependence on American payment schemes are now equally concerned about a possible tsunami of dollar denominated stablecoins arriving from the USA.
However, Central Bank Digital Currencies, like the digital euro, are a very different proposition to commercial stablecoins. CBDC’s are designed as cash-substitutes that bring direct benefits to citizens rather than as infrastructure-level plumbing to facilitate international trade. The European Central Bank hopes to have a political deal on the digital euro by early next year.
The commercial banks aren’t happy and paid PwC to write a study that put the cost of digital euro adoption at €30bn if the digital euro sucks deposits out of current accounts leading to banks making fewer loans.
There are still few signs of crypto (stable or unstable) being used for retail payments. Undeterred, SpacePay, based in London, is raising $1.1m from the sale of its $SPY tokens, to promote crypto currency acceptance on its Android payment terminals. SpacePay says it charges just 0.5% and settles in fiat currency.
Coinbase, a platform that allows people to buy/sell crypto, is running adverts in the UK suggesting that investing gambling in crypto is the solution to inflation, stagnating wages, crumbling infrastructure and a withering welfare system. This won’t end well.
In other news
Numia won the merchant acquiring business of Banco BPM from Nexi last year. One of the first deliverables is “100 kiosks in 100 churches” allowing the faithful to make contactless donations.
Netherlands Railways has blocked virtual cards issued by Revolut, Paysafe and Vividfollowing discovery of a loophole that allowed passengers to travel for free. People would create a virtual card, take a trip, and then delete the card before the overnight settlement run.
Pedro Carvalho, sales director at Primer, which supplies payment infrastructure to large merchants, has spent the summer posting checkout crimes on LinkedIn. Here’s my favourite – the merchant asking shoppers to choose the processor. Why?
Shopify’s head of engineering gives advice on how to use AI. He says get your lawyers to default to “yes” and don’t skimp on letting your staff subscribe to the best tools. “If your engineers are spending $1,000 per month more because of LLMs and they are 10% more productive, that’s too cheap. Anyone would kill for a 10% increase in productivity for only $1,000 per month.”
Sam Altman says AI will kill KYC as we know it. Risk systems need to be “always on” to cope with the growing wave of deepfakes, spoofing and voice-cloning, he says.
How does a Shift4 logo get on an Adyen terminal? An Adyen exec responds: “What you’re seeing is an odd choice of background image, which is fully customizable on any of our terminals.”
Photo credit: James Lloyd
Where to find me
I’ll be at the Checkout.com’s conference in Venice 7-9 October, at the ESPM meeting in London on 23 October, at the ePay Summit in London on 28 October and MPE in Berlin next March.
Worldline’s management responded to last month’s fraud allegations concerning its German business by commissioning two independent reviews. One will assess the remaining high-risk portfolio “to confirm its clean-up,” while the other, led by Oliver Wyman, will deliver a “comprehensive assessment” of Worldline’s compliance and risk framework. Initial findings are expected within weeks.
Despite a plunging share price and market cap now under €1bn, analysts aren’t calling Worldline a buy. The bonds are trading at less than 90 cents to the dollar. Rebuilding investor trust will require time, stable results and no more nasty surprises.
GTCR might want to hold off booking that profit just yet.
JP Morgan paid $800m for 48.5% of Greek fintech Viva Wallet in 2022 and announced a 50-person “payments innovation lab” in Athens. But the deal quickly soured and is now tied up in litigation in both Athens and London. In the latest twist, both sides are claiming victory. Despite the uncertainty, Viva seems to be doing well in the marketplace and has started calling itself the First Fintech Bank in Europe.
Figure 1 Photo credit Viva.com
Viva is part of a fast-growing group of well-funded, POS-focused European payment start-ups including SumUp, Flatpay, myPOS World and Dojo – some acquirers, some payment facilitators (PF). Let’s call them the Tap Pack.
SumUp, the Anglo-German PF that reported €1bn revenue and a maiden operating profit in 2024, has postponed its IPO to 2026. Valued at €8bn in its last funding round, analysts doubt that figure will hold in today’s market.
SumUp has also agreed, at long last to support Girocard payments. The move responds to two issues: Mastercard’s phase out of Maestro, and the German savings banks’ launch of S-Cube, a SumUp rival with Girocard bundled in.
Flatpay says it will sign 5,000 new merchants this month, boosted by its French expansion which claims 40 staff and 1,000 merchants already. Pricing is very keen – a free PAX A920 and all transactions at just 1.29%. The Danish PF is entering the UK next with the radical innovation of recruiting an in-house sales team in place of the usual network of self-employed agents.
The Tap Pack have been gaining ground at the expense of incumbents like Worldline and Barclaycard. But they now face pressure from a new wave of capital-light, unregulated startups offering a slick user experience on Adyen’s rails. Examples include Yetipay, Kody, and MyPOS Connect (not to be confused with MyPOS World).
London-based Yetipay just raised £3.5m in debt and equity for its hospitality payments platform. It claims to process £500m annually and generate £5m in revenue. The Adyen integration has enabled fast expansion into Spain and Italy. Here’s a photo of founder Oliver Pugh with what the press release questionably describes as a pink yeti.
Turning to SoftPOS, Rubean, listed on the Munich Stock Exchange, is finally seeing real growth. First-half 2025 revenues jumped to €2.54m, up from €0.84m a year earlier. Analysts expect full-year sales to double, and the stock has surged 35% to an all-time high of €8.75.
Rubean’s key selling points include Girocard support and integration with Redsys in Spain. Deichmann, the German shoe retailer, uses Rubean’s technology on Zebra handhelds into payment terminals. It’s a great example how SoftPOS can be transformational for enterprise retail.
In fundraising news:
Modern World Business Solutions (UK) raised £9m to scale from 60 to 200 staff. MWBS offers a white-label ISO-as-a-service platform and a comparison tool for SMEs seeking better payment deals.
Ontik, a London-based startup automating cash collection for the building trades, raised $3.7m. Payments are processed via Stripe or Yapily for open banking.
Paddle, the merchant-of-record platform for SaaS vendors, shrugged off a recent $5m US regulatory fine with a $25m debt raise. Its 2023 accounts showed a £46m operating loss on £57m revenue.Germany’s savings banks remain rare incumbent winners. S-Payment, their merchant services arm, grew revenue 13% to €292m in 2024, with mobile payments (Apple/Google Pay at POS) especially strong. Girocard transactions rose 12%, double the national average. And no red flags were raised in PayOne, the group’s JV with Worldline—which will reassure its beleaguered shareholders.
Scheming
Visa and Mastercard are facing mounting legal pressure in Europe. In a landmark UK ruling, a court found that commercial and inter-regional interchange fees breach competition law. Crucially, the court ruled interchange is anti-competitive “by object” – a first which could trigger a wave of merchant damages claims. Both networks plan to appeal.
Visa and Mastercard justify their fees by highlighting innovations such as tokenisation, now covering nearly half of Mastercard’s European transactions and Click to Pay, their long-delayed answer to PayPal. This is finally getting some serious marketing dollars although these don’t seem to have reached Poland.
With European payment sovereignty high on the political agenda, much depends on wero, the wallet backed by the European Payments Initiative (EPI). According to Finanz-Szene, EPI has raised an impressive €450m from shareholders including Worldline and Nexi. To succeed wero needs wide distribution through mobile banking apps and broad acceptance from merchants.
The distribution side is going well with five new Belgian banks added and Austria reportedly in talks. Wero claims 42 million users across Belgium, France, and Germany and processed €5bn in P2P volume in its first three months. eCommerce support is due this year, with in-store payments in 2026.
Wero hopes to link with Europe’s domestic mobile wallets, including Blik (Poland), Bancomat (Italy), Bizum (Spain), Vipps (Norway), IRIS (Greece), and MB Way (Portugal). Greece’s IRIS is likely to gain momentum thanks to a new law mandating acceptance both online and in-store.
The convergence of software and payments, pioneered in the USA, is now accelerating across Europe. A new report from Flagship Consulting highlights the extent to which PSPs are acquiring European software firms to gain distribution in key verticals like restaurants and retail. Let me know if you spot any they’ve missed.
American software vendors realised years ago they could double their margins by integrating payments. As Jim Roddy from the Retail Solution Providers Association puts it: “ISVs are the new ISOs.“I visited an RSPA member once, and the CEO didn’t show me new software. He shut the door, plugged in a TV, and pulled up a spreadsheet showing how much he made monthly from payments. The numbers were huge.”
Not all customers are thrilled. American restaurateurs are increasingly frustrated at being locked into inflexible, expensive payment setups bundled with their POS software. While competition authorities haven’t stepped in yet, scrutiny may not be far off, especially if merchants are barred from choosing their processor.
Acquirers hoping to partner with ISVs need to fully embed their offer within the software vendor’s customer proposition. That means API-based onboarding, access to management info, smooth customer service, transparent pricing, and generous commissions for the software partner.
Where does it go wrong? A Dutch restaurant shared on LinkedIn its experience of switching from Worldline to Viva. Integrating Viva’s terminals with its Odoo ECR software took less than two minutes. Worldline supports Odoo too but only via a special IoT box costing €35/month. The restaurant chose Viva despite higher transaction fees, citing better support and a simpler setup.
ChatGPT’s prototype shopping agent is slow and error-prone today, but it’s easy to see how it could soon become ubiquitous and render traditional eCommerce websites obsolete. If the AI already knows your shipping and payment info, what’s the point of a checkout page? Simon Taylor explores the implications. Startups like Ogment are already offering tools for merchants to adopt.
Shopify, the world’s leading eCommerce platform, is pushing back, posting a robots.txt file that directs agent developers to its official checkout SDK. Amazon is doing the same. As this LinkedIn discussion shows, Shopify’s move may upset tech purists but will please merchants already overwhelmed by bot traffic.
It’s still early days, and AI can’t yet be trusted. In one test, an AI managing an office vending machine lost money by over-discounting snacks and inexplicably stocking unsellable metal cubes.
Despite Amazon’s recent U-turn, checkout-free tech is gaining traction in high-traffic locations like stadiums. In Europe, we’re seeing rollouts in small grocery formats. Coca-Cola HBC plans 15 checkout-free stores in Hungary using low-cost Chinese AI from Cloudpick, integrated by Kende Retail and with payments by myPOS. This price is said to be just €40,000 for each shop.
Old fashioned vending is also rising as a payments channel. This 72-lane Boxbar drink dispenser in Manchester uses Adyen, Global Payments, and Viva for processing.
Having failed to commercialise virtual reality, Meta is now focusing on augmented reality via glasses and recently acquired a 3% stake in EssilorLuxottica, makers of Ray-Ban. It looks less ridiculous than a VR headset and you can imagine the power of AI seeing what you’re seeing and whispering helpful advice in your ear. Or maybe not. Matt Jones explains what it means for payments.
In Hong Kong, Alipay has launched smart glasses that let users pay by looking at a QR code and speaking the amount out loud. Rokid powers the app. Meizu has a similar product, with a dash of dystopia. People using these glasses don’t make eye contact and it’s very disconcerting as you can see from the video.
Product
Here’s a novel but quite risky idea. Better, based in Tel Aviv, is offering to step in to honour transactions where the card is declined due to insufficient funds. This start-up will “save the sale” by settling the merchant (less 10-15% commission) and waiting until after pay-day to put the transaction through. Better says it has already run a proof of concept with PayU. Similar products are available including Bounce.
Many subscription payment providers are struggling to keep up with the move by software vendors away from per seat or tiered pricing to models focused on how much data you crunch. Stripe reports that this “usage-based” billing is up 145% year to date.
Payments and loyalty
Rewe, the German supermarket giant with 3,800 stores, has launched Rewe Pay, a QR code wallet built by its in-house processor, Paymenttools. Setup is a bit clunky: shoppers register their Girocard, then complete a SEPA direct debit mandate via the app and sign their name on an in-store tablet. After that, payments are easy, made by scanning a QR code at checkout.
Commentators see Rewe Pay as a response to rising processing costs, especially as shoppers increasingly use Apple Pay linked to Visa and Mastercard, but the automatic incorporation of Rewe Bonus points on all purchases is equally interesting.
In a controlled, single-merchant environment like Rewe, the model should work. But I’ve long been sceptical of open-loop, card-linked loyalty. That idea has been around for years but has stumbled on technical barriers, unreliable merchant category code (MCC) data, and the difficulty of building profitable loyalty economics. Plus, card-linking offers benefits after the transaction, not before, making it hard for merchants to recognise high-value customers at the point of sale.
Paylead, based in Bordeaux, takes a bank-centric model, linking consumer ccounts to retail deals at the largest merchants such as Auchan and Decathlon. Paylead raised $6m in 2020. And Loyyo (Netherlands) replaces stamp cards with payment-linked rewards, is available via Adyen and CCV also recently secured new funding.
Fraud update
Chargebacks continue to rise. Ethoca projects global dispute volumes will hit 324 million by 2028, driven mainly by post-sale issues like slow refunds, unclear billing, and delivery friction, rather than outright fraud. The real pain is operational which has pushed merchants to look beyond traditional fraud tools. Visa’s Rapid Dispute Resolution (RDR) is gaining traction and is claimed to cut chargebacks by 20–30% for participating merchants.
So much for the carrot, here’s the stick. Visa’s updated Acquirer Monitoring Program(VAMP) is raising the stakes. Acquirers now face stricter thresholds, tighter enforcement, and the risk of fines, or even losing their membership if chargeback rates across their merchant portfolios climb too high. TrustPay (not to be confused with Trust Payments) has a solid explainer on the changes.
VAMP and Mastercard’s counterpart, the Excessive Fraud Merchant (EFM) programme, put pressure on acquirers and PSPs to take a more proactive role in policing their portfolios. In recent weeks, both Worldline and Paddle have shown the consequences of inattention. But for merchants, the message is equally clear: chargebacks are no longer just a cost of doing business, they’re a serious reputational and commercial risk that could jeopardise access to processing altogether
Car Commerce
The global auto industry is scrambling for new revenue and wants to pivot to a service-led model where drivers pay for parking, charging, or fuel directly through the vehicle’s OS. Naturally, the car brands want a cut. That’s why many are now resisting Apple’s “CarPlay Ultra”, which sidelines in-car payment systems. The problem? Motorists prefer to dock their phones and control everything from there. Top Gear takes a detailed look in this video.
Under pressure from government, the UK industry has agreed to roll out a National Parking Platformwhich allows any participating app to work across all publicly owned car parks. It’s already live at 476 locations, handling 550,000 transactions a month. There’s not that much money in parking payments. I calculate the three leaders in the UK market – Ringo, JustPark and Paybyphone – generate annual sales of c.£60m between them.
Open banking
UK open banking payments have stalled, with volumes flat at around 28 million transactions per month since early 2025. This reinforces the urgent need for a proper open banking scheme—with an acceptance mark, rulebook, consumer protection, and a business model that gives banks a reason to maintain high-quality APIs.
TrueLayer underscored the slow pace of adoption across Europe with new figures from France and Germany Despite claiming a 60% market share in France, it processes just €2bn annually; in Germany, it holds 30% with €1.4bn in volume. Nobody is getting rich soon. A new Stripe partnership may help, but patchy bank APIs continue to limit growth.
Meanwhile, Trustly appears to be the only open banking player making real money. In 2024, volumes rose 54% to $85bn, and net revenue grew 32% to $239m. “Adjusted”EBITDA was up 50% to $73m. Business remains strong in North America and Europe, where Trustly retained its UK Government tax contract. Note: these results come from a press release, not audited accounts.
Trustly’s profit engine is widely believed to be US gaming, so others are following. London-based Yaspa, which offers open banking payments with integrated KYC, has raised $12m to target US iGaming, through a new office in Atlanta.
In a completely different vertical, Bumper, a UK car finance company, has acquired Cocoon, an open banking payment vendor which says its product is used by 20% of car dealers.
Stable coins
There’s been an explosion of commentary on stablecoins following the approval of Trump’s Genius Act, which for the first time sets out a regulatory framework. Jason Mikula has the details. Genius has triggered a rush among banks, fintechs and retailers to launch their own digital dollars which will be backed 1:1 by US Treasuries, although, unlike dollars in a bank account, there is no deposit insurance.
Why would businesses want in? For one, they keep the interest on Treasury bonds. And for retailers, stablecoin wallets could cut card fees if shoppers preload value. But it’s unclear why everyday users, especially in European democracies with easy access to banking services, would hold a private currency with no consumer protection. “Unless you’re a criminal, there’s no use case,” says Ryan Cummings, former White House advisor.
Business of Payments readers likely have two questions:
When will stablecoins be used for retail payments?
As for profitability: probably not. If stablecoins are fungible, meaning a “Walmart dollar” is interchangeable with a “JPMorgan dollar” then margins may collapse to 10bps, in line with money market funds. Coinbase is already offering 4.1% on USDC, and as Andrew Dresdner notes, that leaves little room for profit.
In other news
The latest UK government payments strategy includes the formation of several new committees: a Payments Vision Delivery Committee, a Vision Engagement Group, and a Retail Payments Infrastructure Board. Undoubtedly good news for those who make a living sitting on industry panels.
In Denmark, NETS went down on Saturday 19 July, leaving Danes unable to use ATMs or POS terminals at home and abroad across Dankort, Visa, and Mastercard. One group of Danes stranded in Cyprus wrote: “Our plan for now is to try a live performance that includes both singing and dancing, but we are crossing our fingers that the problem is resolved before they refuse to serve us any more beers.”
Figure 2: Danes struggling to come to terms with the NETS outage
