Transaction & Payment Processing Services

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.

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%.

Alchemy has integrated AgentCard with Mastercard Agent Pay, establishing a dedicated identity layer that gives each autonomous AI agent its own email address, phone number, stablecoin wallet, and tokenized payment credentials. The integration adds Verifiable Intent, a standard co-developed with Google that provides tamper-resistant cryptographic proof linking a consumer's specific instructions to a transaction outcome, with selective disclosure of only the minimum required information at checkout. AgentCard originally launched in June 2026 with Visa Intelligent Commerce, and setup now takes a single command-line instruction and under one minute, with credentials encrypted at rest and granular controls including merchant category restrictions, geographic limits, and instant freeze-or-revoke. Alchemy CEO Nikil Viswanathan said AI agents are moving from simple assistants to software that can take action, while Mastercard EVP of Digital Commercialization Sherri Haymond said the future of commerce is about agents that can be trusted to act on your behalf. The infrastructure push comes as only 3% of transactions involve agents and developers face integration costs of $5,000 to $500,000 per protocol, while Visa completed hundreds of secure agent transactions in a closed beta and projects millions by holiday 2026. Structural obstacles remain: only 23% of consumers trust AI to handle payments and 85% demand transparency on data use, 90% of executives express confidence in their visibility over AI usage while only 11% of applications are visible to IT departments, and 93% of merchants believe the AI provider should bear the financial risk of transactions.

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.

PayPal's Venmo has launched its 2026-2027 Name, Image and Likeness campaign with nine student-athletes spanning football, basketball, volleyball, gymnastics and softball, seven of whom compete in women's sports. Alongside the partnerships, Venmo introduced Money Moves, an initiative letting participating athletes receive part of their NIL earnings through Venmo and use the app to give back to teammates, coaches, mentors, family and fans, with campaign content running on Venmo's Instagram and TikTok throughout the school year. The push builds on Venmo's existing college-campus presence through college-branded debit cards, NIL partnerships and game-day experiences, and Venmo-commissioned research found 68% of surveyed college students said splitting costs helps prevent money issues between friends while 63% were more likely to join plans when costs could be split digitally. The campaign arrives as Venmo's second-quarter 2026 total payment volume rose 14% year over year to about $93.8 billion, a seventh straight quarter of double-digit growth, with Pay with Venmo volume up 44% and Venmo Debit Card monthly active accounts up more than 50%. Customers using both Venmo Debit and Pay with Venmo generated more than nine times the average revenue per account of P2P-only users in the second quarter of 2026, and that higher-value group roughly doubled over the past year.

Mastercard rolled out an AI payment option on Thursday that allows a virtual credit card to be issued to a user's AI agent, letting the bot make purchases without seeking the cardholder's approval each time, through a partnership with startup Alchemy. Users connect an existing AI agent to their Mastercard through Alchemy and set restrictions on what the agent can do, including spending caps and limits on which retailers it can shop at, and the agent can then make purchases at any online merchant that accepts Mastercard, though cardholders can also choose to have the agent check back before completing a transaction. Mastercard said its system depends on agentic tokens that the issuing bank generates, bundling together the cardholder's stated intent and transaction details so the network can confirm the agent is operating within authorized boundaries. Mastercard chief product officer Jorn Lambert said the company views agentic commerce as inevitable, adding that it is not about if but about when and how quickly, and that nothing happens overnight. Visa partnered with Alchemy earlier this year, according to The Wall Street Journal, meaning a majority of credit cards can now work with the tool, and Visa, Mastercard, and American Express have each announced their own tools and standards to support AI-driven purchases. Trust remains the biggest barrier to widespread adoption, according to The Wall Street Journal, with many users wary of trusting an AI agent with their financial details and worried about bots running up charges they never approved, and Citizens Financial Group president Brendan Coughlin said the concept is a really good one but certainly not without its risks. Uncertainty also surrounds the regulatory treatment of agentic payments, and it remains unsettled who would bear responsibility if an AI agent, whether malfunctioning or acting outside its intended scope, were to complete a transaction the cardholder never sanctioned, according to The Wall Street Journal, with bank executives including Coughlin remaining skeptical that the technology will take over the payments landscape soon.

Jack Henry & Associates reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 results, with earnings of $1.57 per share surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 9%, though the bottom line declined 10.2% year over year. Revenues rose 4.7% year over year to $644 million, beating the consensus mark by 2.3%, while non-GAAP revenues were $633.1 million, up 6.6% year over year after adjusting for deconversion revenues of $9.3 million and acquisition revenues of $1.6 million. GAAP operating income declined 12.2% year over year to $136.8 million, with the operating margin contracting to 21.2% from 25.3%, as higher personnel costs and a 19.2% surge in selling, general and administrative expenses pressured profitability. For fiscal 2027, the company expects GAAP revenues of $2.684-$2.709 billion, representing growth of 5.5-6.5%, and GAAP earnings of $7.33-$7.38 per share, suggesting year-over-year growth of 5-5.7%. Management highlighted a record 58 competitive core wins for fiscal 2026, including 14 institutions with more than $1 billion in assets, and CFO Mimi Carsley noted a 23.2% return on invested capital for the full year.

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 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.

Fidelity National Information Services said its core banking business is gaining traction as banks launch, merge and modernize their technology, signing five newly chartered banks in the first half of 2026, including Mercury, which has conditional approval for a national bank charter and FDIC deposit insurance approval. FIS also won the core banking mandate for a newly formed U.S. institution with more than $100 billion in assets. Two top-15 U.S. banks completed proofs of value for FIS' enterprise platform strategy, which lets banks progressively adopt modern capabilities, including AI, while preserving the stability of their existing core environments. The wins come as the FDIC approved 14 deposit insurance applications in the year through April 2026, twice the number approved during calendar 2025, signaling renewed de novo activity in banking. FIS shares have declined 44.6% year to date, and the stock carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

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.

Circle, the major US stablecoin issuer, announced on the 16th that it has launched the mainnet of its proprietary blockchain platform, Arc. The underlying Layer 1 network uses the stablecoin USDC for gas fees and is designed to finalize payments in under one second, connecting to more than 20 other blockchains through Circle's own protocol. Eleven major financial institutions and companies, including BlackRock, DTCC, and Visa, have joined as validators. Circle revealed that by the 16th it had issued the entire initial supply of 10 billion ARC tokens, the token used on Arc, within the United States. Circle is the first publicly listed company to issue a new Layer 1 network token, but the move does not guarantee that ARC will be made public or listed; it is described as a technical milestone in the process of aiming to migrate from proof of authority to proof of stake by 2027. Major cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance, Bybit, and OKX already support Arc, and Coinbase and others are expected to follow soon. Robinhood, the US securities app, also stated on the 16th that it will support USDC deposits and withdrawals on Arc, with support set to begin in the near future.

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.

Mastercard is pushing deeper into AI-driven commerce by backing common identity standards for autonomous shopping agents, Reuters reported, with the shares slipping approximately 0.5% to $570.60 Wednesday. Mastercard, Visa and Ant International are developing a Know-Your-Agent framework designed to verify approved purchasing agents across card networks, digital wallets, marketplaces and AI platforms. Each participant would still control its own authorization and risk policies, but a shared identity layer could eliminate the need for merchants and AI developers to build separate verification systems for every payment ecosystem, easing integration hurdles for agent-based payments at scale. Mastercard expects more than one in ten online shoppers to routinely let AI agents make purchases for them by 2030, while its Agent Pay for Machines initiative already has more than 30 supporters, including Stripe, Coinbase and Cloudflare. The chart shows Mastercard at $570.60 versus a GF Value estimate of $682.45, putting the shares 16.39% below that benchmark, a discount that suggests the market assigns limited value today to Mastercard's longer-term agentic-commerce opportunity.

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.

Circle Internet Group has unveiled a new blockchain called Arc, as the stablecoin developer seeks to diversify beyond issuing its $74 billion USDC stablecoin. In a statement, Circle said Arc will help it become one of the biggest blockchain companies providing the rails for moving money and financial assets onchain, describing the network as a general-purpose "economic operating system" for payments, tokenized financial markets, lending, trading, and commerce. Major companies including BlackRock and Visa are among Arc's first validators, and Circle's payments network is being integrated directly into the blockchain along with its foreign-exchange platform for cross-currency settlement. Transaction fees on Arc are paid with Circle's USDC stablecoin, the company said. The launch comes amid growing competition in the global stablecoin market, and after Circle was dealt a blow earlier this year when a group of 21 financial institutions, including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, announced plans to launch their own U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin in 2027. CRCL stock has declined 36% in the past 12 months to trade at $86.30 U.S. per share.

Circle's Arc blockchain went live on September 16, 2026, as an open, EVM-compatible Layer 1 network, one day after the CLARITY Act failed a cloture vote in the U.S. Senate. The network's 12 founding validators include BlackRock, DTCC, Visa, Mastercard, and ICE, operating as a permissioned environment that Circle positions as institutional-grade settlement infrastructure. Arc uses native USDC as its gas token and launches with a Proof-of-Authority consensus mechanism, with a planned evolution to Proof-of-Stake and future staking economics for the ARC token. Circle plans to tokenize DTC-custodied assets on Arc by H2 2027, targeting a DTCC that industry estimates says processes approximately $2.4 quadrillion in securities transactions annually, while BlackRock is expected to deploy its BUIDL fund, valued by industry estimates at over $2 billion, onto the network. The project faces headwinds: the New York Department of Financial Services has not reviewed or approved the network as of the August 2026 announcement, and the small, hand-picked validator set invites centralization concerns.

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 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.

Fiserv CEO Takis Georgakopoulos said the company is prioritizing customer service, platform stability, product simplification and faster execution of its technology roadmap as it works to improve performance across its Financial Solutions and Merchant Solutions businesses. Management said Project Elevate has identified $500 million in savings and is expected to contribute 200 basis points of cumulative margin expansion over several years, with the margin benefits back-loaded so that the expected 2029 impact is nearly twice the impact projected for 2027. Fiserv also disclosed an incremental $100 million technology-infrastructure investment, primarily in Financial Solutions, following testing against Frontier AI models and intended to accelerate remediation of security vulnerabilities. CFO Paul Todd said Fiserv expects adjusted revenue to decline 1% to 3% in the third quarter due to non-recurring comparison dynamics, followed by mid-single-digit growth in the fourth quarter, and that Clover volume growth is already at the low end of the company's 10% to 15% target range while revenue growth adjusted for certain items is at the low end of its 15% to 20% target. On capital allocation, Todd said the first priority remains reducing leverage below 3 times, with a target range of 2.5 times to 3 times over the 2027-to-2029 cycle, after which share repurchases become the highest priority for excess free cash flow.

Mastercard and KEO Capital have entered a multi-year partnership to expand KEO's cross-border card program. The agreement focuses on widening access to Mastercard-branded cards for KEO Capital clients and program participants in international markets, targeting broader use of Mastercard solutions in cross-border payments for financial institutions and other KEO Capital partners. The deal supports the view that global expansion and digital-focused agreements can keep volumes on the Mastercard network rather than drifting to local schemes or non-card rails used by players like Visa and American Express. Cross-border cards still face pressure from real-time payment systems and regulatory focus on fees, with analysts having already flagged competition and pricing as key risks. The article was produced by Simply Wall St.

Circle has officially announced that it will launch the Arc mainnet on September 16, with the market watching to see whether meme coins will boom in the footsteps of Robinhood Chain. Meanwhile, Bitcoin has rebounded back above $77,800 and is trading in a range of $76,636 to $79,600, amid a revival in the crypto market and trading volume. Investors are also keeping an eye on the CLARITY Act draft and the Fed meeting, viewing the key resistance level at $80,000, which the price has not yet been able to break above.

Visa shares closed at $375.28, up 1.3% and outperforming a session in which the S&P 500 fell 0.48%, the Dow lost 0.29% and the Nasdaq dropped 0.56%. Ahead of the payments processor's upcoming results, the consensus estimate projects earnings per share of $3.43, a 15.1% increase from the same quarter last year, on revenue of $12.07 billion, up 12.56%. For the full year, Zacks Consensus Estimates project earnings of $13.16 per share and revenue of $45.83 billion, representing changes of +14.73% and +14.58% respectively from the prior year. Over the past 30 days the consensus EPS projection has moved 0.05% higher, and Visa currently carries a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold). The stock trades at a forward P/E of 28.15, a premium to the industry average of 13.14, with a PEG ratio of 1.98 versus an average of 0.86 for the Financial Transaction Services industry.

PayPal is positioning agentic payments as a long-term growth opportunity, with management expecting the technology to become increasingly meaningful from 2028 onward, though it is not expected to materially contribute to near-term results. The company believes agentic payments can help it monetize its established wallet, merchant infrastructure, identity, risk capabilities and two-sided network, but has not provided specific revenue or transaction forecasts for the business. PayPal's existing scale backs the opportunity: in the second quarter of 2026, total payment volume reached $486.4 billion, payment transactions came in at 6.75 billion, and active accounts stood at 439 million. Agentic payments are not PayPal's primary near-term growth driver, as financial services, Venmo, Braintree and improved checkout execution remain more immediate priorities amid subdued branded checkout growth. Competitors are moving too, with Visa building Visa Intelligent Commerce and partnering with OpenAI in June 2026, and Mastercard advancing Mastercard Agent Pay and expanding it with Agent Pay for Machines in June 2026. PayPal shares have gained 26.5% over the past three months, and the stock trades at a forward 12-month P/E of 9.46X versus the Zacks Financial Transaction Services industry's 17.70X.

Visa Business and Economic Insights released new research finding that consumers are increasingly shopping, dining, streaming and managing daily life from home, driving the rise of the "couch economy." The report, The Great Indoors: How the "Couch Economy" Is Redefining Consumer Spending Habits, examined spending trends across six markets: Australia, Brazil, Poland, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. In three illustrative markets, the share of domestic payment volume occurring online and in-app rose from 48% to 58% in the U.S., 10% to 24% in Poland and 35% to 55% in the UAE. Streaming subscriptions now appear on a larger share of cards than cinema and concert spending across all markets studied, with more than 17% of U.S. cards used for streaming subscriptions compared to roughly 6% associated with cinema and concert spending. Food delivery has become a mainstream service, with the share of UAE cards active on delivery apps rising from approximately 2 percent in 2018 to nearly 30 percent in 2026, and roughly 8 percent of U.S. domestic cards show regular pet-related spending.

Circle opened the public mainnet of Arc, its Layer 1 payments network, on Wednesday with 11 founding validators drawn from traditional finance, including BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard, Galaxy, SBI Group, and Standard Chartered. The company raised $222 million in an Arc token presale at a $3 billion valuation, and gas on the chain is paid in USDC rather than a volatile native token, with Circle designing Arc around payments, foreign exchange, and tokenized securities. Speculators have spent recent weeks mapping Arc launchpads and pre-mainnet tokens, betting the chain's opening week will resemble the meme coin rush that overtook Robinhood Chain, the Arbitrum-based Layer 2 launched on July 1 around real-world assets. Within a week of that launch, meme coins set the pace, with decentralized exchange volume hitting a record $563.9 million on July 8 and traders creating 16,639 tokens in a single day, before the chain cleared $1.06 billion in daily DEX volume on August 29 and peaked at a new all-time high of $3.7 billion earlier this month. USDC already carries a $74.2 billion market cap, and the first week of trading should show whether bankers or degens get there faster.

Decentralized exchange Uniswap said on September 14 via its official X account that it plans to support 'Arc,' the proprietary layer-1 blockchain developed by US-based Circle, from its first day of public availability. Arc's public mainnet is scheduled to go live on September 16, and Uniswap will be available from day one. Arc is an L1 built by Circle, the issuer of the US dollar-denominated stablecoin USD Coin, and it allows gas fees to be paid in USDC, adopts a design that finalizes transactions in under one second, and is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Lending services such as Aave and Morpho also plan to support it from the first day of launch, with the aim of offering decentralized finance services alongside a payments foundation. Founding validators responsible for transaction verification include BlackRock, Visa, SBI Group, and Sumitomo Corporation; developers can build applications without permission, while participation as a validator is permissioned.

Block, Inc. has filed an application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to charter Builders Bank & Trust, N.A., an uninsured national trust bank that would not accept deposits or make traditional loans but would focus on fiduciary and custody services for bitcoin and stablecoins. The September 8 filing, if approved, would give Block a federally supervised framework for digital asset custody and could strengthen its institutional credibility as it seeks to expand its institutional customer base. Block could also use the regulated infrastructure to support broader stablecoin-related products and payments through its Cash App ecosystem, and to benefit from the GENIUS Act, which established a federal regulatory framework for stablecoins. The OCC must still review and approve the application, and regulators could impose additional conditions or delay the process, while higher compliance, cybersecurity, reporting and risk-management requirements would add costs. According to Insider Monkey's database, 76 hedge funds held positions in Block at the end of the second quarter, up from 63 at the end of the first quarter, with Citadel Investment Group cutting its stake by 7% to approximately $448.49 million and Tiger Global Management raising its position by 15% to approximately $347.78 million.

Block, Inc. filed an application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on September 8, 2026 for a national trust bank charter under the name Builders Bank & Trust, N.A., seeking federal authorization to custody Bitcoin and stablecoins at institutional scale. The charter is uninsured and non-deposit-taking, meaning Block is not seeking to become a traditional bank, but rather to bypass the state-by-state money transmitter licensing regime that has constrained its Cash App business since inception. Block's filing joins a broader charter wave that has sorted into three distinct lanes: crypto-native firms such as Circle, which received final OCC approval in July, Ripple, which obtained a conditional charter, and BitGo, which secured final approval; Wall Street institutions including JPMorgan, BNY Mellon, and State Street, which have expanded digital asset custody through existing banking licenses rather than new charters; and Block itself, a consumer fintech with over 50 million monthly active users on Cash App that is building institutional plumbing. The structural advantage of an OCC trust charter is preemption, replacing a patchwork of state requirements with a single federal framework and providing access to the Federal Reserve's payment rails and correspondent banking network. The timing matters, as the CLARITY Act heads for a Senate floor vote on September 15 and the GENIUS Act, signed into law in July, established a stablecoin-specific regulatory framework, while the OCC's processing timeline for national trust bank charters has varied from six months to over a year.

Toast added 9,500 new restaurant locations in the 2026 second quarter, a 22% increase over last year, bringing its total to 180,000. The digital restaurant platform's annualized recurring run rate grew 25% year over year in the quarter, following growth of 30% in Q3 2025 and 26% in both Q4 2025 and Q1 2026. Toast also turned net income positive last year, with profits increasing since then. CEO Aman Narang said the company's AI agents and 14 years of operational data let clients get more value from the platform, after clients previously outsourced tasks like payroll and marketing. Toast stock trades at 41 times trailing-12-month earnings and 19 times forward one-year earnings, and is down almost 9% this year despite the results.

Visa has teamed up with Mastercard and Ant International to build shared identity standards for AI purchasing agents, sending Visa shares up about 0.7% to $369.65 on Friday while Mastercard added 0.4% to $567.59. The proposed Know-Your-Agent framework aims to give card networks, digital wallets, online marketplaces and AI platforms a common way to verify legitimate agents without surrendering their own approval and fraud controls. The initiative combines Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard Verifiable Intent and Ant's Agentic Mobile Protocol through a platform convened by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Visa's $369.65 share price sits 13.06% below its GF Value estimate of $425.18. Shared verification could cut friction and help AI-driven shopping scale faster, potentially pushing more transactions across Visa's network, but investors still have only the blueprint, with no launch date, revenue forecast or new pricing model.

PayPal Holdings is pushing PayPal and Venmo deeper into everyday payment occasions through new integrations with Illumia, Nelnet Campus Commerce and TouchNet that let students and families pay college tuition through existing campus portals. The tuition integrations are live at institutions including Butler University, Kansas State University, Michigan State University and Texas Tech University, with more schools expected to join in 2026, extending PayPal's existing college presence built through agreements with the Big Ten and Big 12, Venmo NIL partnerships, college-branded cards and student ambassadors. On the buy now, pay later side, Temu introduced PayPal BNPL in Canada in the second quarter of 2026, expanding availability to eight markets globally, while Home Depot Canada added upstream presentment of PayPal's BNPL options. PayPal is also working to unify Braintree, PayPal Complete Payments and Hyperwallet into a single foundation, which management expects to improve interoperability and expand self-processing capabilities, merchant lending and payouts. Second-quarter total payment volume rose 10% to $486.4 billion, with Venmo and Braintree continuing to deliver mid-teens TPV growth, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 EPS moved a cent upward to $5.38 over the past month, implying a 1.3% rise year over year. PayPal shares trade at 9.39X forward 12-month price-to-earnings versus the Zacks Financial Transaction Services industry's 17.58X, and the stock carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Chime Financial has agreed to acquire its longtime banking partner Stride Bank for $590 million in cash, giving the fintech direct ownership of a nationally chartered bank. The company expects the deal to generate more than $100 million in net synergies through lower sponsor-bank fees, a broader range of lending products and a lower cost of funds. Chime also raised its 2026 revenue-growth forecast to 26% to 27%, up from its previous guidance of 25% to 26%. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2027, pending regulatory approval, and shares rose nearly 10% in extended trading after the announcement. Management has indicated it plans to keep assets below $10 billion for the foreseeable future, partly to preserve certain regulatory advantages related to debit-card fees under the Durbin Amendment.

Visa is expanding its data offering to blockchain-based lenders as demand for stablecoin-linked cards accelerates, combining its VisaNet settlement data with onchain lending infrastructure to help stablecoin card programs and fintechs obtain working capital more efficiently. The company currently has more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs, with payment volume on those programs up nearly 200% year over year, while stablecoin settlement volume has surpassed a $20 billion annualized run rate, more than 15 times the level a year earlier. The model gives blockchain lenders access to settlement-performance data so they can assess credit risk and provide financing faster, addressing a practical constraint for fast-growing stablecoin card issuers that need capital to fund daily settlement obligations before collecting money from cardholders. Visa has already been piloting the approach with Credit Coop, with more than $2.5 billion in cumulative financed settlement volume since 2023 across participating facilities and no reported defaults. Its broader partnership with Bridge is targeting expansion of stablecoin-linked Visa cards to more than 100 countries, though the $20 billion annualized stablecoin settlement run rate remains relatively small compared with Visa's traditional payments business, and regulatory, credit and privacy risks persist.