Every time you swipe a card, send money, or tap to pay in an app, a tiny sliver of money gets skimmed along the way. That's the 'toll' of the payment system. The biggest business in finance is built by the people who put up that tollgate — Visa and Mastercard earn over 60% gross margins from simply being the 'rails' money runs across. This lesson is the story of those rails: how they work, who collects the toll, and why 2025–2026 is the moment new rails — instant payments, cross-border, and stablecoins — are trying to dig a shortcut around the gate.
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Partior and LSEG Partner on 24/7 Settlement, Targeting Q1 2027 Launch
Partior, which operates a blockchain-based payment network, announced on the 17th a partnership with LSEG DiSH, the settlement infrastructure arm of London Stock Exchange Group, to bring always-on settlement bank liquidity to international remittance networks. Partior is a blockchain-based interbank clearing and settlement network jointly founded in 2021 by JPMorgan, DBS Bank, and Temasek, with JPMorgan participating as one of its founding shareholders. Under the new framework, the two sides are developing a Multi Settlement Bank solution that combines LSEG DiSH's omnibus trust account with Partior's multi-currency clearing and settlement network, enabling 24/7 liquidity movement among multiple settlement banks. The aim is to reduce the need to pre-fund nostro and vostro accounts and to lessen reliance on remittance cut-off times. Partior, LSEG, and participating banks are currently conducting cross-industry testing and are preparing for a production launch in the first quarter of 2027 and for accepting additional settlement banks into the framework. Founding shareholder Standard Chartered and participating banks such as Deutsche Bank have also expressed their participation in the framework, with an eye toward future feature expansions such as intraday foreign exchange trading and securities settlement.
Europe Runs Live Agent Payments Across 30+ Banks as US Stalls on Liability
Europe has moved agentic payments into live production while the United States remains stalled over who bears the loss when an AI agent errs. Live end-to-end payments have been executed by Santander, Mastercard, ING, and Worldline, and on July 2, 2026, ING, Worldline, and Visa completed an agentic payment in Germany using Visa Payment Passkeys for biometric authentication. Mastercard has enabled all issuers in Europe at the network level for Agent Pay, backed by a new Lisbon Centre of Excellence for Innovation, with Mastercard Europe President Kelly Devine calling agentic payments a profound shift in how commerce is initiated and executed. In the US, the Treasury OIG has flagged ambiguity in Regulation E on agent authorization, and the AI AGENT Act introduced in July 2026 addresses fiduciary duties rather than liability allocation for agent misexecution, prompting the Consumer Bankers Association to recommend the industry write its own private network rules. Hypertrade data shows a 4,700% year-over-year increase in AI-generated traffic to retail sites, yet agentic commerce is less than 1% of US e-commerce, with only 23% of US consumers trusting generative AI to handle payment transactions and 93% of merchants saying the AI provider should bear the financial loss for incorrect purchases.
Mastercard, Visa race to set standards for AI agent shopping payments
Mastercard rolled out a payment option Thursday that lets cardholders give an AI agent a virtual card to buy things online without checking in before each purchase, with limits on spending, retailers, or required approval before checkout. Rival Visa partnered with Alchemy earlier this year and has announced its own AI shopping and payment product, Visa Intelligent Commerce, which the company says is still being deployed, while Meta's Muse can search for products and navigate checkout but presents the purchase for the user's final approval. Phil Bruno, chief strategy and growth officer at payments company ACI Worldwide, called it "a land grab for infrastructure standards," saying that if card companies set the standards for agentic commerce they can keep the commerce in their environments for decades to come. Consumer appetite lags the infrastructure push: just 7% of U.S. and U.K. consumers surveyed who buy fashion items said they would allow an AI assistant to make purchases without approval under predefined conditions, according to research commissioned by ACI Worldwide, and more than half said they were uncomfortable allowing AI to purchase on their behalf. Mastercard has developed a digital paper trail called Verifiable Intent to record who authorized the agent to shop and what it was authorized to buy, but when asked who would be responsible if an agent made an incorrect, fraudulent, or unauthorized purchase, Mastercard pointed back to Verifiable Intent and did not specify who would ultimately be responsible if an agent bought something outside those instructions.
Mastercard, Alchemy Launch AgentCard for AI Agent Payments
Alchemy has turned its agent-payment framework into a live developer product called AgentCard, giving AI software agents single-use Mastercard credentials tied to a customer's existing account rather than permanent access to a payment card. Developers can set spending caps, limit eligible merchants and restrict transactions geographically, while users keep their existing rewards and credit arrangements. Alchemy says the service is already available, letting autonomous agents buy goods anywhere Mastercard is accepted online. Mastercard shares were nearly flat at $566.285 Friday morning, and the chart puts the stock 17.09% below a GF Value estimate of $683. Neither company has disclosed pricing, transaction volumes or committed customers yet.
Sam Altman's Worldcoin Launches World Money Stablecoin Super App in 150 Countries
World, the crypto network co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, launched a global stablecoin super app called World Money. The self-custody app combines stablecoin balances, payments, trading, investing and yield, and is set to be available in 150 countries. It integrates with Stripe, Bridge and Kalshi, among others. The app's novel approach ties World's proof-of-human verification, the iris-scanning system that gives users free tokens for proving they are human, to a full suite of crypto-powered financial services. World was previously known as Worldcoin.
PayPal World Facilitates $200 Million in PayPal-Venmo Volume
PayPal Holdings is using its PayPal World initiative to strengthen connectivity across its consumer ecosystem, and the effort facilitated roughly $200 million in total payment volume between PayPal and Venmo in the second quarter. The company is focusing on increasing engagement among existing customers, as second-quarter payment transactions rose 8% year over year and transactions per active account, excluding payment service provider activity, rose 7%, while monthly active accounts increased just 1%. Venmo illustrates the monetization potential of deeper engagement: Venmo total payment volume grew 14% year over year, monthly active accounts for the Venmo Debit Card increased more than 50%, and customers using both Venmo Debit and Pay with Venmo generated more than nine times the average revenue per account of peer-to-peer-only users. Among competitors, Block generated $3.17 billion in gross profit in the second quarter of 2026, up 25% year over year, with Cash App gross profit up 31% to $1.97 billion and Square gross profit up 13% to $1.16 billion on Square GPV of $72.8 billion, while Fiserv reported $5.29 billion in GAAP revenues, down 4%, adjusted revenues of $4.96 billion, down 4%, and adjusted EPS of $1.84, down 26%. PayPal shares have gained 24.5% over the past three months and trade at a forward 12-month P/E of 9.31X, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate for full-year 2026 EPS has been revised upward to $5.38 over the past two months, indicating a year-over-year increase of 1.3%.
Ripple Links XRP to Stripe's AI Agent Payments in Beta
Ripple has integrated the XRP Ledger into Stripe's agent payment flow through the Machine Payments Protocol, or MPP, a standard Stripe co-authored with the payments blockchain Tempo. The integration, announced September 17, 2026, arrives via version 1.1 of Ripple's XRPL AI Starter Kit, which adds MPP and Open Wallet Standard support, and it runs on XRP rather than Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin because RLUSD is an issued token that cannot yet support payment channels, the mechanism that lets an agent stream more than 100,000 off-chain vouchers per second and settle with just two on-chain transactions. Extending channels to issued tokens would require a future XRPL upgrade that Ripple has not scheduled. The kit remains in beta with no live commercial volume, and no merchants on Stripe's platform have routed a session through it, while Circle launched its own payments blockchain, Arc, the day before Ripple's announcement. As of September 18, XRP traded at $1.32, up 16.97% over the past month but down 4.66% over the past week.
GlobalData: Influencers Back 0.4% UPI MDR as Key to Ecosystem Monetisation
GlobalData reports that influencers on X largely view India's new 0.4% Merchant Discount Rate on Person-to-Merchant Unified Payments Interface transactions above INR 2,000 ($20.8) as a vital step toward monetising the UPI ecosystem. Shreyasee Majumder, Social Media Analyst at GlobalData, said influencers see the levy as creating a durable revenue base for banks, acquirers and payment platforms, funding payment infrastructure, cybersecurity and credit-linked services, and improving the financial outlook for payment companies, including supporting public listing plans for PhonePe and lifting forward earnings forecasts for merchant platforms such as Paytm and Pine Labs. Influencers expect larger merchants above monthly turnover thresholds to absorb the fee, while peer-to-peer transfers, recurring payments and rural QR codes remain exempt, though some merchants may push cash payments or other means to recover the cost on higher-value transactions. Commentators including MobiKwik CEO Bipin Preet Singh, Moneycontrol Executive Editor Chandra R. Srikanth, Emerging Payments Association Asia Chief Expansion and Innovation Officer Monica Jasuja, research analyst Abhishek Kothari and Capitalmind Mutual Fund CEO Deepak Shenoy stressed that the new UPI levy remains substantially lower than traditional debit card charges of 0.90% and credit card charges of 1.5-2.5%. Kothari said he now explicitly incorporates UPI MDR monetisation into Paytm and Pine Labs estimates, assuming roughly 30% of Paytm's UPI GMV is MDR eligible versus about 70% for Pine Labs, with Paytm capturing around 10bps of the MDR pie and Pine Labs 6bp. Influencers cautioned that in the long term the ecosystem must ensure infrastructure and value-added service improvements outweigh merchant cost pressures to preserve widespread digital adoption.
Coinbase Partners With Stablecore to Bring Stablecoins to 3,000-Plus Community Banks
Coinbase announced a partnership with Stablecore on September 16, 2026, embedding digital asset capabilities into the core banking systems used by more than 3,000 community banks and credit unions. The deal plugs Coinbase into existing core banking providers such as Q2 and Jack Henry, letting legacy institutions offer tokenized deposits, digital asset accounts, and collateralized loans without overhauling their technology stacks. It is Coinbase's second major distribution play in September alone: six days earlier, on September 10, the exchange partnered with Moov to bring stablecoin payments and real-time funding to another 1,000-plus institutions. Together the two deals reach into a US long tail of more than 4,700 community banks and 4,700 credit unions. Coinbase's Alec Lovett said community banks and credit unions should not have to choose between staying local and staying current, while Stablecore's Alex Treece said banks should not have to migrate to entirely new platforms to support digital assets. The push comes as the OCC's November deadline looms as a potential catalyst for federal clarity; PYMNTS Intelligence data shows 77% of consumers would open a stablecoin wallet through their existing banking or fintech application, but if the OCC deadline slips or the final rule narrows eligibility, the new integrations stay dormant.
NEAR Partners with Hyperliquid to Launch First Confidential Perps Trading, Price Jumps 21%
Near Protocol has launched the industry's first "confidential by default" perpetual contract trading on near.com, partnering with Hyperliquid, which serves as the core layer for execution and liquidity. Users can access more than 50 perpetual markets with leverage of up to 40x. The feature conceals all contract positions, including asset type, size, entry time, and trading direction, helping reduce the risks of front-running, strategy copying, and forced liquidations. This Perps trading runs on a multi-chain Confidential Intents pipeline, which has just reached a milestone of 70 million dollars in total locked asset value, and the network's USDC integration also enables payments between AI agents using stablecoins. However, this confidential Perps trading remains restricted in the United States and Canada for regulatory reasons. After the launch, NEAR surged 21.36% intraday, pulling back to trade at 3.21 dollars, while HYPE rose 10.82%, pulling back to trade at 86.72 dollars, after Payward, the parent company of Kraken, announced plans to bring Hyperliquid into the US market.
Apple to Launch Apple Pay in India Next Month in Partnership with Axis Bank
Apple is expected to begin offering its Apple Pay payment service in India next month through a partnership with Axis Bank's credit cards, according to three people familiar with the matter. India had been one of the few major countries where Apple Pay was not yet available. Mumbai-based Axis Bank is the fourth-largest credit card issuer in India. Apple Pay is also in talks with HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank, both larger than Axis Bank, but the two sides have not yet reached agreement on terms, according to two of the people. Apple and HDFC did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters. ICICI and Axis said they had no comment.
World launches World Money super app in 150 countries, linking Stripe and Apple Pay
World, the identity-focused cryptocurrency project formerly known as Worldcoin, is launching a self-custodial financial app in more than 150 countries under the name World Money, combining stablecoin payments, trading, earnings and a virtual account in a single app. The app supports balances in 8 currencies and connects with Stripe, Kalshi and Morpho. Stripe will power a new top-up system in the United States that lets users convert funds from Apple Pay into stablecoins, typically completing within a few minutes. World ID verification is integrated into the app, including to earn higher returns in the participating Earn program. Features and asset availability vary by jurisdiction. World is a project under Tools for Humanity, a company co-founded by Alex Blania and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The company began moving toward super-app functionality in March 2025, when it added crypto payments and chat to the app, and later that summer Circle launched native USDC on World, replacing bridged USDC in the World App wallet.
Wells Fargo Launches ExpressSend Mobile Remittance Service in 12 Countries
Wells Fargo has introduced ExpressSend Mobile, a dedicated remittance feature inside its consumer banking app that supports real-time international transfers from U.S. accounts to recipients in 12 countries. The bank says the launch makes it the only major U.S. bank offering an in-app, branded remittance channel of this type, putting it in direct competition with money transfer specialists inside its own app. Wells Fargo is one of the largest U.S. banks by market value at $263.2 billion and runs a broad mix of retail banking, mortgage lending, and consumer finance services, giving it a sizable existing customer base to plug into the new cross-border transfer tool. The company has not disclosed user adoption or transaction volume figures for ExpressSend Mobile, and investors will be watching for growth in active remittance users or transfer counts per quarter, as well as any commentary linking ExpressSend flows to higher digital engagement or cross-sell activity.
Google Rethink ROI Summit Highlights Gap Between AI Discovery and Payment Readiness
Google's Rethink ROI summit in New York spotlighted a widening gap between rapid AI-driven shopping discovery and merchant payment systems that cannot yet complete agent-initiated transactions. The platform's new conversational attributes let retailers feed structured data, including FAQ, compatible accessories, and substitutes, directly into the Shopping Graph, and in early testing with Lululemon, brand-supplied attributes were incorporated into AI Mode recommendations 50% of the time. Demand for such tools is backed by Adobe Analytics data showing an 805% year-over-year increase in AI-driven traffic to retail sites during Black Friday 2025, while Salesforce Cyber Week data confirms retailers with integrated AI agents grew sales 32% faster than those without, and Adobe found those shoppers are 38% more likely to convert. That traffic, however, is colliding with a payment readiness deficit: the TLT LLP Retail Agility survey of the top 100 UK retailers found that while 49% are investing in agentic AI, only 15% say their payment systems are prepared for agent-initiated transactions. Google is attempting to standardize the transaction layer through the Universal Commerce Protocol and the Universal Cart framework, which aim to enable persistent, cross-platform shopping carts across Search, YouTube, and Gmail, and with a 10-week horizon to Black Friday 2026, the next two months will determine which brands move from discovery-focused AI to transaction-ready agentic commerce.
Visa Joins Mastercard and Ant International on AI Agent Identity Standards
Visa has joined Mastercard and Ant International in pushing for common identity standards for AI purchasing agents, proposing a Know-Your-Agent framework that would let verified trust signals travel across card networks, digital wallets, marketplaces and agent platforms without forcing every participant into the same approval system. Under the proposal, each company would still decide which agents it trusts, while shared certification, identifiable operators and ongoing transaction monitoring could give the emerging agent-commerce ecosystem a common security backbone. Visa shares slipped approximately 0.4% to $369.39. For Visa, interoperability cuts both ways: common standards could strip friction out of agent payments, reduce duplicated verification and accelerate adoption across merchants and platforms, potentially expanding the pool of transactions flowing through Visa's network, but Visa would not control the identity layer alone. No transaction-volume, pricing or revenue commitments were disclosed.
Visa's Agent Commerce Gap: Hundreds of Beta Transactions Versus Millions Projected
Visa reported in December 2025 that it had completed "hundreds" of secure, agent-initiated transactions in a closed beta, while projecting that "millions" of consumers will use AI agents to complete purchases by the 2026 holiday season. That gap between a few hundred test cases and a multi-million-transaction reality marks the adoption ceiling for agentic commerce, held back by three structural barriers: consumer trust, merchant liability, and protocol proliferation. According to the Visa Earning Trust Report, only 23% of U.S. consumers trust generative AI to handle payment transactions, and PYMNTS Intelligence found that just 14% trust AI to execute purchases without manual verification, while 93% of merchants believe the AI provider should bear the financial loss for incorrect purchases and only 28% are willing to offer their full product range to AI agents. The technical landscape is fragmented across at least five competing checkout protocols, including Visa Intelligent Commerce, Mastercard Agent Pay, Stripe ACP, Google UCP, and Meta Muse, with integration costs ranging from $5,000 to $500,000 per protocol. Visa is attempting to bridge the gap with Intelligent Commerce Connect, a network-, protocol-, and token-vault-agnostic integration platform, but it remains unproven at the scale required to hit Visa's holiday 2026 targets, and Bernstein research notes that agentic commerce currently accounts for less than 1% of U.S. e-commerce.
Coinbase CEO Says AI Agents Will Need Their Own Financial Infrastructure
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said AI agents will need their own financial infrastructure, telling Scott Melker that the company has built a set of tools for the agentic economy. Armstrong said the existing payment rails are sometimes not sufficient for AI because agents want to move very fast, make payments globally, and in some cases transact in very small amounts. The stack includes the Base blockchain, the USDC stablecoin that Coinbase co-created with Circle, and the X402 protocol, which Coinbase created and which is now under the Linux Foundation in collaboration with Google, AWS, CloudFlare and others. He said X402 allows agents to pay each other in real time instantly all over the world, even in very small transaction amounts like a couple of cents at a time, which traditional payment rails do not really support. Armstrong also said Coinbase has been able to bring perpetual futures products to the US under this administration, calling them a pretty killer app in the trading world, and that he expects a future not too far off in which more agents transact in the economy than humans.
Global Payments Posts 33.8% Revenue Jump as Worldpay Integration Advances
Global Payments Inc. is entering a new phase as a pure-play commerce solutions provider, with Worldpay now central to its strategy after the acquisition brought complementary payment capabilities and a broader global distribution network. In the second quarter of 2026, adjusted net revenues increased 33.8% year over year to $3.2 billion, helped by the addition of Worldpay, while on a normalized basis that includes Worldpay's pre-acquisition results, adjusted net revenues rose 4% and adjusted operating margin improved 70 basis points to 42%. Management pointed to progress in the Worldpay integration during the second quarter, alongside continued development of its Genius platform and the application of AI across its ecosystem. For 2026, GPN expects normalized constant-currency adjusted net revenue growth of approximately 4%-5%, with adjusted EPS projected at $13.60-$13.80, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 earnings stands at $13.64 per share, implying 11.6% growth from the year-ago period. Shares of GPN have risen 11.8% in the year-to-date period against the industry's decline of 11.2%, and the stock trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 5.63 versus the industry average of 17.60.
Mastercard Targets Small-Business Growth With New Collection for Business
Mastercard is positioning itself beyond payments with a new Collection for Business offering, citing survey findings that small businesses prioritize stability and integrated tools. Its Dreamonomics survey of more than 6,000 SMEs across 18 countries found that 68% prioritize stability and predictability over rapid growth, while 54% avoid unnecessary financial risk, and 61% favor deeper customer relationships over simply reaching more buyers. The new Collection for Business combines payment capabilities with productivity tools, travel and lifestyle benefits, cybersecurity support and business-focused experiences for eligible cardholders. Mastercard sees clear gaps: SMEs already rely on five digital tools on average, yet 89% intend to add more and 78% say integrated tools are critical, while 71% consider cyber protection a priority but only 37% currently use cybersecurity tools. Rival Visa launched its Visa & Main platform with a $100 million working-capital facility, and American Express offers its Business Blueprint, as Mastercard shares have lost 0.5% year to date compared with the broader industry's 11.2% decline.
SBI and Kyobo Life Complete Proof of Concept for Direct Yen-Won Stablecoin Exchange
Kyobo Life Insurance of South Korea announced on September 17 that it had completed a proof of concept for institutional fund transfers between Japan and South Korea conducted with the SBI Group. Since July, the two parties have tested a mechanism for directly exchanging yen-denominated and won-denominated stablecoins to move funds from Japan to South Korea without going through the US dollar, using test tokens. SBI Digital Practice, an SBI Group subsidiary, took part in the trial, confirming the flow of fund transfers, foreign exchange swaps, and settlement in the test environment of Canton Network, a blockchain for financial institutions. According to Kyobo Life, this is the first time South Korea's insurance industry has verified the full cross-border processing chain for institutional funds. Kyobo Life said the trial confirmed that the intermediary foreign exchange procedures could be simplified, processing times shortened, and transaction information tracked.
NCR Atleos Wins Bank Pekao Deal to Modernize Card Payment Processing
NCR Atleos Corporation has been selected by Bank Pekao S.A. to modernize the bank's card payment processing infrastructure using the Atleos Authentic payment switching platform. Bank Pekao S.A., described as one of the largest financial institutions in Central and Eastern Europe, chose the platform as part of its card payment processing modernization strategy following a comprehensive evaluation process. Under the agreement, Atleos will provide its Authentic switch platform to support the bank's card payment processing operations and future innovation objectives, with the implementation expected to modernize the bank's card payments infrastructure and provide a scalable foundation for future growth. Maciej Jopyk, CIO and head of IT at Bank Pekao S.A., said the bank selected the Authentic platform for its proven capabilities, flexibility and strong track record supporting payment modernization initiatives at financial institutions around the world. Bartłomiej Śliwa, Area Vice President for Central and Eastern Europe, Global Sales, at Atleos, called the agreement an important milestone for the company and said it further demonstrates Authentic leadership in helping financial institutions modernize complex payments environments. The agreement strengthens Atleos presence in Central and Eastern Europe and highlights growing demand among financial institutions seeking to replace legacy payment processing systems with modern, scalable platforms.
Circle Launches Arc, a New Blockchain for USDC Fees
Circle, the major US stablecoin issuer, announced on September 16 that it has launched the mainnet of Arc, its underlying layer-1 blockchain. Arc is designed so that transaction processing fees are paid in the dollar-denominated stablecoin USDC, with settlements finalized in under one second, and it also offers security features for institutional investors such as confidential transactions and quantum-resistant signatures. The founding validators that approve transactions include 11 companies, among them BlackRock, the US DTCC, Visa, Mastercard, SBI Group, and Sumitomo Corporation. Arc is linked to StableFX, a foreign exchange platform that exchanges multiple currencies around the clock, and JPYC, the company issuing the Japanese yen stablecoin JPYC, is also listed as a participating partner currency. By the 16th, Circle had completed the issuance of an initial supply of 10 billion of its own token, ARC, and aims to migrate to proof of stake around 2027, saying it is the world's first listed company to issue its own token on a new layer-1.
Hyundai Card Eyes Avalanche Expansion After Stablecoin Payments Pilot
Hyundai Card appears to be moving toward a much more ambitious phase of its blockchain strategy after successfully testing stablecoin-based corporate payments on Avalanche. The pilot, which used stablecoins to handle corporate payments, was completed successfully, according to the company. The card issuer is now eyeing an expansion of the effort, though no specific timeline, investment figure, or scope for the next phase was disclosed. The test marks a step beyond experimentation for Hyundai Card's blockchain work, which until now had not been tied to a live corporate payments use case. Avalanche, the blockchain network used in the trial, would host any broader rollout.
Circle Agrees to Buy Tazapay for About $400 Million in Stock
Circle Internet Group agreed on September 8 to acquire Singapore-based Tazapay, a payments provider serving payment providers and financial institutions, for approximately $400 million in Class A common stock, subject to adjustments for debt, cash, and transaction expenses, plus $25 million of post-closing employee restricted stock unit awards. As of July 31, 2026, Tazapay had more than $25 billion of annualized payment volume, over 60 banking and fintech partners, and payout capabilities across more than 100 markets, with roughly 60% of that transaction volume involving stablecoins, though USDC's share was not specified. Closing is expected in 2027, subject to customary conditions and regulatory approvals, including approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Circle reported second-quarter reserve income of approximately $668 million against $701 million of total revenue and reserve income, with reserve income representing roughly 95% of the total and other revenue at approximately $34 million. The announcement did not disclose Tazapay's revenue, margins, or customer concentration, and the stock consideration would dilute existing shareholders.
Meta's Muse AI Agent Could Route Shopify Orders Without Storefront Visits
Meta has launched Muse, a personal AI agent that browses and acts on a shopper's behalf through the Muse app or WhatsApp, with Stripe's Link handling checkout at launch and Shop Pay described as a planned addition rather than a live integration. Purchases through Muse require user approval, so no order completes silently, but a shopper could authorize an order routed through the agent without ever loading the merchant's storefront, leaving Shopify to hold the checkout and payment layer even though it does not own the assistant. Shopify has argued the traffic is additive rather than substitutional, noting traditional search sessions are up 1.3x over the past two years and that AI-driven traffic and orders to Shopify stores tripled year over year, while management insists agentic transactions carry the same economics with no new fees and no separate pricing, a comment that covered Shopify's own agent surfaces rather than a third-party integration with Meta. Reuters reported reliability and privacy problems in internal tests of Muse, casting doubt on the rollout timeline for the planned Shop Pay integration. Shopify shares are down 19.33% year to date, trading near $129.86 against a market cap of roughly $158.4 billion and a P/E near 129x against 2027 EPS estimates averaging $2.4596, a multiple that already assumes Shopify wins the agent layer.
Circle Launches Arc Mainnet With BlackRock, Visa Among Validators
Circle has launched the public mainnet of Arc, a Layer 1 blockchain built for payments, trading and agentic economic activity, with BlackRock, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo, Visa, Worldpay and Galaxy forming its founding cohort of validators. Chief executive Jeremy Allaire called it the single most significant launch in Circle's history since USDC itself, and the USDC stablecoin, with around $74 billion in circulation, serves as the chain's gas token. Circle completed the genesis mint of ARC this week, creating all 10 billion tokens and making it the first publicly traded company to mint a network token for a new Layer 1, though the company said the mint is not a commitment to publicly launch ARC and described it as a technical step toward a possible move from proof of authority to proof of stake in 2027. Circle had already raised $222 million in an Arc token presale at a $3 billion valuation. Banks with access include BNY, HSBC, Societe Generale and State Street, while Aave and Morpho anchor lending, Uniswap, Aero and fomo provide trading, and Binance, Kraken, Bybit and OKX offer routes in, with Coinbase to follow; BlackRock's BUIDL and Circle's USYC provide tokenized collateral. Circle said USDC accounts for 98.8% of agent-driven transaction volume, citing Dune, and that Arc's testnet, launched last year with BlackRock and Visa among the participants, processed more than 700 million transactions in under a year.
NPCI to Impose 0.4% Fee on High-Value UPI Payments From 15 October
The National Payments Corporation of India will introduce a 0.4% merchant discount rate on Unified Payments Interface transactions exceeding Rs2,000, or $20.8, starting 15 October. The measure follows a legislative amendment passed earlier this week authorising fees on UPI transactions above that threshold, and customers will not pay the MDR directly, with banks advised to ensure merchants do not pass the charge on. The framework sets different fees and caps by merchant category: payments to railways, telecommunications, insurance and fuel merchants carry a flat MDR of Rs5, while general merchant fees on transactions above Rs75,000, or $782, are capped at Rs300, and capital market transactions including equities and mutual funds carry a 0.02% fee capped at Rs300. Small businesses and certain locations remain exempt, with merchants receiving up to Rs100,000 a month through UPI QR-code payments incurring no MDR charges and QR-code transactions in rural and semi-urban areas also remaining free. NPCI said revenue from the levy will support investment in system resilience, technological innovation, cybersecurity and customer service, and the Reserve Bank of India backed the move, saying in a post on X that it is an important step towards strengthening the long-term sustainability of India's digital payments ecosystem. UPI processed 24 billion transactions worth $311bn in August, according to a Reuters report.
Fin.com exits stealth with $20m seed round to expand payment rails
Financial infrastructure provider Fin.com has emerged from stealth with $20m in seed funding. The New York-based firm said the round was led by venture firm Expa and Uber co-founder Garrett Camp, with Coinbase Ventures, Tenet Fund, Second Sight Ventures, and various sovereign and family offices across the Gulf and Africa among the other participants. Co-founded by Nabeel Alamgir and Mustafa Dar, Fin.com operates a single orchestration layer that lets clients receive, convert, and move money across borders using local payment rails, and integrates SWIFT messaging, USD virtual accounts, stablecoin settlement, liquidity management, and compliance tools into one network. The company said it already moves money for some of the world's largest payments and money-transfer platforms as well as digital-asset exchanges, reaching 825 million end users through those enterprise integrations. Fin.com is expanding by acquiring licenced local financial entities rather than raising billions to enter markets from the outside, and has finalised seven acquisitions to date with plans to reach 12 completed transactions by the end of the year. The new capital will go toward opening additional payment corridors and executing its acquisition pipeline, and the firm intends to pursue the acquisition of a licensed bank within the next six months; it currently employs more than 200 people across six global offices.
Ripple's RLUSD Hits $2.345 Billion Market Cap as Acquisition Strategy Builds Institutional Settlement Rails
Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin has reached approximately $2.345 billion in market cap as of September 16, 2026, a 1,278% year-to-date increase that makes it the third-fastest growing stablecoin of the year, with daily transfer activity tripling since January to $750 million per day by August. Roughly $963 million of the token sits on the XRP Ledger and $1.05 billion on Ethereum. Ripple is pursuing a vertically integrated strategy built on acquisitions rather than validators, including the $1.25 billion purchase of Hidden Road, now rebranded Ripple Prime, which clears roughly $3 trillion annually and lets RLUSD serve as collateral with zero haircut for over 300 institutional clients, alongside the $1 billion acquisition of GTreasury's treasury management platform, which reaches 1,200 corporate treasurers processing $13 trillion annually. Integrations include a September 2025 partnership with DBS and Franklin Templeton for 24/7 trading of tokenized money market funds, a Securitize link allowing holders of BlackRock BUIDL and VanEck VBILL to swap into RLUSD around the clock, and a Mastercard and WebBank pilot marking the first time a regulated US bank has settled card transactions on a public blockchain using a stablecoin. Ripple holds a New York Department of Financial Services trust company charter and conditional OCC approval, and launched in Japan via SBI under the JFSA's revised Payment Services Act, positioning itself around private-sector consensus and state-level charters after the CLARITY Act failed on September 15. The Federal Reserve Master Account remains the key bottleneck, and expansion into L2 networks via Wormhole NTT is still pending NYDFS approval.
METI Survey of 154 Payment Processing Firms Finds 30 Trillion Yen in Transaction Volume
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry on the 16th released a fact-finding survey on credit card payment processing agents, conducted following the start of bankruptcy proceedings for Zendenshin. As of 2025, the number of such businesses stood at 154, with combined annual transaction volume reaching approximately 30 trillion yen. Because payment processing agents fell outside the scope of the Installment Sales Act, the full picture, including the number of operators, had not been grasped until now. The survey was conducted from late July to early August, and of the 266 card companies asked to respond, 108 had contracts with payment processing agents, and 16 percent of these had not examined the financial condition of the payment processing agents before or after contracting. METI urged card companies to screen payment processing agents and to establish internal rules to prevent unpaid balances owed to member merchants from arising when contracts are terminated.
ECB opens applications for online merchants to join digital euro pilot in 2027
The European Central Bank, or ECB, is accepting applications from online and mobile merchants in the eurozone to join a 12-month digital euro pilot project, which is expected to begin in the second half of 2027. Interested parties can submit applications until October 27. Selected businesses will enable payments with a beta version of the digital euro in a remote commerce environment and test how the currency works with checkout counter payment processes. The pilot will assess user experience, technical functionality and operational processes of the digital euro, with the beta version closely resembling the currency described in draft legislation, though it will not yet have legal tender status. Participation is voluntary and unpaid. Applicants will be evaluated on market reach, operational readiness and suitability, and those selected will need to establish or adjust relationships with participating payment service providers. Previously, in July, the ECB selected 36 payment service providers from more than 50 applicants, including Revolut, Stripe, Deutsche Bank and UniCredit. Participants were tasked with supporting user access, merchant acceptance, or both. Merchant feedback will help inform design decisions, and a final decision on issuing the digital euro will only be made after relevant European Union legislation is approved.
Government fast-tracks four central systems to cut off fraud money trails and boost victims' chances of getting money back
The Ministry of Finance, together with the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society and related agencies, is preparing a National Anti-Fraud Master Plan and laying out four national central systems to link risk data, incident reporting, money-trail tracking and asset freezing, so that agencies can act on the same information immediately instead of keeping data separate and coordinating step by step. Ms. Lalida Periswiwatana, deputy spokesperson for the Prime Minister's Office, said the government is accelerating efforts to cut off the money trails of technology-driven crime, after finding that money movements have become more complex and faster. Where funds once moved mainly through bank accounts, they can now be spread across multiple layers of accounts, withdrawn as cash, converted into digital assets, gold or foreign currency, or moved out of the country within just a few hours, meaning the old coordination approach may not be able to keep up with the money. The four central systems are: first, One Identity, One Risk Level, which links risk data so that financial institutions, telecom operators, digital platforms and law enforcement see the same set of risks in real time; second, a fraud-pattern analytics system that builds an anonymised financial transaction data centre to analyse criminal networks; third, a single-report, single-trail system that combines reports made through the 1441 hotline, financial institutions and the police into one system using a single reference number throughout the process; and fourth, a track-in-time, freeze-fast system that links data to follow money as it moves and issues freeze orders under legal authority, while supporting the return of funds to victims or the lifting of freezes in line with case outcomes. Related agencies will raise KYC, CDD and EDD standards to tighten scrutiny of customers and risky transactions from the outset, to a level comparable with financial centres abroad. The subcommittee on linking financial data to improve the monitoring of suspicious financial transactions, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Ekniti Nitithanprapas, has assigned the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Finance, together with related agencies, to speed up the design of the details of all four systems, including data structure, connectivity, responsible agencies and data standards, for completion within 30 days before submitting them to the subcommittee for further consideration.
X Enables Crypto and Stock Trading via Cashtags in the US
On September 15, X launched its "Cashtag Partner Program" in the United States, allowing users to move from stock and cryptocurrency cashtags to partner trading services to buy and sell. The program covers cashtags for stocks, exchange-traded funds, and cryptocurrencies; tapping one displays price charts and related posts, and a "Trade" button lets users choose a partner. Trades are executed not on X itself but through each partner's app or website, and the initial partners are Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, Interactive Brokers, and Moomoo. According to Interactive Brokers, existing customers can move from X's ticker pages to the firm's accounts to do additional research and place orders, though for now this is limited to US investors. X introduced cashtags for iPhone users in the US and Canada in April, and in Canada it also offered a feature to move to trading services through a partnership with Wealthsimple.
Bank of Thailand rolls out tough measures to curb grey capital and money laundering, controls deposits and withdrawals of 5 million baht and above
The Bank of Thailand, under the leadership of Governor Vitai Ratanakorn, has unveiled a historic structural strategy by tightening oversight of the financial system to block grey capital, money laundering networks and corruption. Under the rules, cash deposits or withdrawals of 5 million baht and above must be accompanied by documents explaining the source of the funds, and financial institutions have the power to reject a transaction immediately if the source cannot be proven. The measures also close loopholes in the conversion of cash into high-value assets such as gold, foreign currency and digital assets like USDT, and extend oversight to non-bank groups, electronic payment service providers and lending service providers. The central bank has also declared war on mule accounts, introducing risk grading for suspicious accounts and cross-institutional data linkage through the Central Fraud Registry, or CFR, along with measures to silence mules by immediately suspending all electronic transactions for anyone involved in wrongdoing across every account and every financial institution. It is also upgrading know-your-customer, customer due diligence and enhanced due diligence processes, setting transfer limits for vulnerable groups, requiring facial scans when transfers exceed a set threshold, limiting mobile banking to one device per user account, and adding protection against remote-control applications. All of this is integrated with cooperation from 11 financial associations, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Anti-Money Laundering Office and the cyber police through the establishment of a Fraud and Risk Working Group, along with a declaration of the principle of shared responsibility that requires financial institutions to share compensation for damage to the public if they are found to have been negligent or to have failed to meet the security standards set by the Bank of Thailand.
Japan's FSA Sets Out Policy to Promote Social Implementation of On-Chain Finance in Fiscal 2026 Financial Administration Policy
Japan's Financial Services Agency on the 15th published its Financial Administration Policy for fiscal 2026, explicitly setting out a policy to promote the social implementation of on-chain finance built on blockchain technology. At the outset of the policy, the FSA explained that in July 2026 the government formulated the Financial Strategy for Promoting Growth Investment: Upgrading the Asset Management Nation, setting out a direction for building the environment for the implementation and spread of on-chain settlement methods and for promoting investment in financial infrastructure. The FSA stated that, as the mechanisms of financial transactions change through technologies such as AI and blockchain, it is important to promote the social implementation of on-chain finance while advancing the sophistication of financial infrastructure for fund and securities settlement through appropriate combinations with existing financial infrastructure. As specific initiatives, it will launch an On-Chain Finance Forum Looking Toward the AI Era, and will examine issues concerning technology, institutions, and supervision in the Research Group on Approaches to Digital and Decentralized Finance and the Research Group on Promoting the Sound Utilization of AI and Other Technologies. It also said it will hold Asia Day 2027, themed on new finance in the digital age, to coincide with Japan Fintech Week, which will be held from February to March 2027.
US Senate Procedural Vote on Clarity Act Fails 49-50
The US Senate on September 15 held a procedural vote to begin consideration of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, a bill establishing a comprehensive regulatory framework for the cryptocurrency market, but the measure failed 49 to 50, falling short of the 60 votes needed. The Clarity Act aims to clarify the regulatory treatment of crypto assets and blockchain projects and to sort out the roles of the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and it included provisions granting the CFTC new authority to oversee the spot market for crypto assets. In the vote, Democratic lawmakers opposed the measure and three Republicans also voted against it; one of the biggest sticking points blocking bipartisan agreement was how to address conflicts of interest surrounding President Trump's crypto business ventures. The latest version would require public officials to sell or move into a blind trust any "significant financial interest" related to crypto assets and would give state attorneys general a certain enforcement role, but Democrats argued it was insufficient to address the conflicts of interest surrounding the president, with Senator Mark Warner saying he could not move forward with a bill that would allow the president to personally profit from the crypto industry. The failed vote makes passage of the bill within the year even more uncertain, and with the congressional calendar limited ahead of the November midterm elections, the Senate could hold another procedural vote, though the path forward is unclear. Meanwhile, the SEC and CFTC are already advancing crypto-related rulemaking, but SEC Chairman Paul Atkins has said congressional legislation is important to ensure long-term regulatory stability.
Stripe's Shared Payment Token Emerges as Default Agentic Commerce Layer
Stripe introduced its Shared Payment Token in October 2025 as a programmable, revocable primitive designed to standardize how AI agents interact with financial rails. The token prevents exposure of underlying credentials during agent-initiated transactions by mapping to the latest Funding Primary Account Number while adding agent-specific metadata such as merchant scoping, time-bound constraints, and transaction caps, with Stripe Radar providing real-time fraud and risk signaling. Stripe is currently the only provider supporting both agentic network tokens and BNPL tokens within a single primitive, a consolidation that matters given BNPL accounts for over $300 billion in global volume and businesses on Stripe report up to a 14% revenue increase on BNPL-eligible sessions. As of March 3, 2026, the platform supports Mastercard Agent Pay, Visa Intelligent Commerce, and BNPL providers including Affirm and Klarna, meaning merchants already integrated with Stripe need no additional development work to support agentic transactions. Adoption remains far behind the infrastructure: only 14% of consumers express trust in AI to execute purchases, dropping significantly for transactions exceeding $50, while just 3% of total transactions involve agents even as 42% of merchants report testing the technology. Stripe is also co-developing the open-source Agentic Commerce Protocol with OpenAI and has made a $7.5 billion acquisition of OpenRouter, signaling an intent to control the routing and execution environment where agents operate.
Mastercard Dreamonomics Report Finds SMEs Prioritizing Stability Over Speed
Mastercard released its inaugural Dreamonomics Report, a global survey of more than 6,000 small and medium-sized enterprises across 18 countries conducted by Hypothesis, finding that 68% of SMEs prioritize stability and predictability over fast growth and 54% actively avoid unnecessary financial risk. The report also found that 61% of SMEs would rather build deep customer relationships than reach as many customers as possible, that SMEs already use five digital business tools on average with 89% wanting to adopt more, and that 71% prioritize protection from cyber threats even though only 37% use cybersecurity tools today. Regionally, 74% of SMEs in Latin America value stability and predictability over fast growth, including 76% in both Argentina and Brazil, while 76% of SMEs in Indonesia do the same and the Middle East and Africa leads in technology adoption, with 43% using AI or machine learning tools and 42% using cybersecurity tools. Alongside the report, Mastercard launched The Mastercard Collection for Business, available to World Business, World Elite Business and the new World Legend Business debit and credit cardholders, bringing together Business Growth, Business Lifestyle and Business Security benefits. Mark Barnett, Global Head of Small and Medium Enterprises at Mastercard, said small businesses bring the dream while Mastercard brings the infrastructure to help propel, protect and power that dream, adding that owners are looking for growth that is more predictable, more protected and easier to manage. Mastercard will also extend the Dreamonomics insights platform into in-market events and cultural moments, including the TCS New York City Marathon and the Australian Open.
Visa Study Finds Home-Centered Spending Embedded Across Six Markets
Visa Inc. says the "couch economy" has become a lasting part of consumer behavior rather than a passing e-commerce trend, with online and in-app payments expanding in every market it studied between 2019 and 2026. In the United States, online and in-app payment volume rose to 58% in 2026 from 48% in 2019, while Poland climbed to 24% from 10% and the UAE increased to 55% from 35%. More than 17% of U.S. cards now carry streaming subscriptions, versus about 6% tied to cinema and concerts, and in the UAE active food delivery cards jumped from roughly 2% in 2018 to nearly 30% in 2026. Visa said the shift creates a favorable payments backdrop, as more online, in-app, subscription and delivery spending can lift digital transaction activity across its network and deepen card usage through recurring payments. Mastercard Incorporated and American Express Company are also benefiting from the same move toward digital purchases, with Mastercard seeing higher transaction volumes and demand for tokenization and fraud prevention services, and American Express gaining through increased card spending, merchant fees and its closed-loop transaction data. Visa shares have gained 7.1% in the year-to-date period against the broader industry's 10.8% decline, and the stock trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 25.18X versus the industry average of 17.69X.
India Amends Law to Allow Banks to Charge UPI Fees on Transactions Above 2,000 Rupees
The Indian government announced an amendment to its payments system law on Monday, September 14, barring banks from charging fees on UPI transactions of up to 2,000 rupees, or roughly 700 baht. The revised rules open the way for banks to charge fees on payment transactions above 2,000 rupees. The new criteria amend an earlier provision that had prohibited fees on all UPI transactions. However, the Indian government has not yet concluded whether it will begin collecting fees, nor how they would be calculated or at what rate they would be charged. Indian government officials have said that if fees are actually introduced, merchants would have to bear them rather than passing the burden on to consumers. Jefferies estimated in August that merchant fees on UPI transactions above 2,000 rupees would generate annual revenue of 50 billion to 100 billion rupees for the payments industry. The UPI system is operated by the National Payments Corporation of India, or NPCI, and data from the International Monetary Fund's 2025 report indicates that UPI is the world's highest-volume instant payment system for retail customers. In August, the system processed 24.51 billion transactions worth 29.82 trillion rupees, and Google Pay and PhonePe, which is partly owned by Walmart, together accounted for about 75% of all UPI transaction volume that month. Debit card payments on India's RuPay network will remain free to use as before.