Mastercard, Flybits and Rogers Bank Complete Canada's First Agentic Commerce Transaction

Walmart's decision to accept Apple Pay and Google Pay after a long holdout is a major coup for mobile wallets and a wake-up call for banks, according to American Banker. Ed Dean, vice president of product at Nuvei, said even a retailer with Walmart's scale to promote its own payment experience has recognized the value of accepting the methods customers already use, warning that banks, merchants, and payment providers that fail to support those preferences risk losing transaction volume and everyday relevance. A recent report from Worldpay found that digital wallets in the U.S. represent 40% of online transaction value and 17% of in-store point-of-sale value, underscoring where the trend is headed. Prashant Shah, vice president of product management at SoFi Tech Solutions, said banks may still hold the primary financial relationship, but the battle is now over payment primacy, noting that if a bank's card isn't the one the customer actually uses, it loses spend and interchange to another issuer even if the checking account stays put. Tony DeSanctis, vice president at Cornerstone Advisors, told American Banker that community banks have largely neglected mobile wallet usage for years and large banks also haven't been on top of things, citing a generational lack of understanding of mobile wallets' ubiquity among younger consumers. A 2026 report from Pulse found that 17% of all debit transactions were initiated through a mobile wallet, with 11.7 card-not-present transactions a month, up 8.3% from the previous year, and 19.7 monthly card-present transactions, up 0.2% from a year earlier.