Protected: How AI-powered banking tools are failing vulnerable customers
June 15, 2026
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A data-driven analysis of the global shifts shaping the global payments ecosystem.
The 2025 Payments Trends Report shows a global payments industry at a turning point: digital payments are now universal, but the real battle is shifting to trust, intelligence, and technology-driven advantage as fraud rises, consumer behaviour fragments, and new infrastructures reshape how money moves.
The global payments industry evolved rapidly in 2025, with digital payments now embedded across regions, demographics, and use cases. As markets mature, the focus is shifting from expansion to efficiency, security, and customer experience. Payments are becoming more complex and interconnected. Card networks remain central, while mobile wallets, account-to-account payments, digital currencies, and embedded finance are reshaping how value moves across the ecosystem. The Payments Report 2025 captures this change through a whole-of-ecosystem lens, drawing insight from banks, PSPs, merchants, fintechs, technology providers, and regulators. It reflects how decisions in one part of the payments value chain increasingly shape outcomes across all others. For payments leaders, the report provides a single, data-led view of where scale is building, where risk is rising, and where investment and innovation are concentrating. It is designed to support strategic planning, prioritisation, and internal decision-making as organisations prepare for 2026.
The global payments industry evolved rapidly in 2025, with digital payments now embedded across regions, demographics, and use cases. As markets mature, the focus is shifting from expansion to efficiency, security, and customer experience. Payments are becoming more complex and interconnected. Card networks remain central in some markets, while mobile wallets, account-to-account payments, digital currencies, and embedded finance are reshaping how value moves domestically and globally across the ecosystem. The Payments Trends Report 2025 captures this change through a whole-of-ecosystem lens, drawing insight from banks, PSPs, merchants, fintechs, technology providers, and regulators. It reflects how decisions in one part of the payments value chain increasingly shape outcomes across all others. For payments leaders, the report provides a single, data-led view of where scale is building, where risk is rising, and where investment and innovation are concentrating. The Report is designed to support strategic planning, prioritisation, and internal decision-making as organisations prepare for 2026.
Global digital payments reached £18.6 trillion in 2025, with mobile POS accounting for a growing share of digital commerce as payment acceptance continues to move beyond fixed checkout locations. While overall growth remains strong, expansion is slowing as markets mature and adoption broadens. For payments leaders, this signals a shift from volume-led growth to optimisation. Competitive advantage increasingly depends on margin management, fraud prevention, and differentiated customer experience rather than scale alone.
Payments in 2025 are expanding while becoming more fragmented across regions and demographics. Card networks remain central to everyday spending, while mobile wallets and Buy Now Pay Later services are reshaping payment behaviour in specific markets and age groups. This divergence reflects a payments landscape that is increasingly shaped by digital engagement, regulation, and local infrastructure, with no single payment model dominating globally.
UK consumer payment behaviour in 2025 reflects widespread digital adoption alongside persistent demand for choice. Over half of consumers make at least one online payment each week, with debit cards and contactless dominating everyday spending. Mobile wallets now lead among 18–24-year-olds and show strongest uptake among students and larger households.
Cash usage remains material: 38% of consumers use cash weekly and 88% want it to remain available, particularly among older and lower-income groups. Security outweighs convenience for high-value purchases, while openness to new payment methods is rising among younger, affluent, and digitally engaged consumers.
Financial crime remained a central challenge in 2025, with 217,417 fraud cases reported, a 1% increase year on year. While overall volumes were stable, the composition of fraud shifted materially across categories.
Identity fraud remained dominant at 55% of cases but fell 7%, while misuse of facility rose 35%, now accounting for nearly a quarter of incidents. Fraud exposure varies sharply by sector, with online media and dating platforms recording the highest rates at 6.3%. AI is the leading response, cited by 24% as the primary opportunity for detection and efficiency gains.
Cross-border payment volumes are forecast to exceed $180 trillion by 2027, with customer expectations converging on domestic real-time standards for speed, transparency, and predictability. Over 70 countries now operate instant payment systems, with early cross-border interlinking starting to reduce friction.
Rather than replacing rails, the industry is optimising them. ISO 20022, AI-driven FX and liquidity tools, virtual accounts, and targeted use of stablecoins and tokenised money are improving visibility, settlement speed, and risk control as cybersecurity remains a growing priority.
Open banking continues to scale in the UK, with steady growth in user adoption and accelerating payment initiation volumes. What began as a data-access framework is increasingly supporting real payment use cases, particularly account-to-account transactions.
Rising API call volumes and successful payment initiations suggest a shift from experimentation to operational deployment, though this is complicated by calls made by credit scoring agencies and PISP payments made by HMRC. The data suggests open banking is moving into its next phase, where reliability, scale, comparable consumer protection, and commercial models matter as much as adoption.
Several technologies are reshaping payments in parallel. AI is increasingly embedded in fraud detection and payment orchestration, though adoption remains uneven, with back-office use cited by just 20% of firms (EY).
Stablecoins are gaining traction for faster, lower-cost cross-border settlement benefitting from regulatory support, while tokenised deposits offer banks a pathway to 24/7 wholesale settlement and improved liquidity management. CBDC momentum has slowed, as embedded payments and open finance models, including Variable Recurring Payments, continue to expand.
Despite ongoing macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, year-on-year data reveals clear directional trends in payments. Digital wallets continue to gain share, rising from 56% in 2023 to an estimated 60% in 2024, while account-to-account and instant payments maintain steady adoption across markets.
Technology investment priorities are also becoming clearer. Generative AI leads adoption focus over the next 12–24 months, followed by machine learning, reflecting a shift toward automation, intelligence, and operational efficiency as core competitive drivers.
The payments industry enters 2026 with the digital adoption of payments largely embedded and attention now turning to optimisation, security, and regulatory alignment. Globally, regulators are sharpening their focus: the US GENIUS Act has catalysed global interest in stablecoins, the EU’s instant payments mandate is reshaping domestic rails, and jurisdictions from Singapore to Brazil continue to advance real-time payment interoperability. Against this backdrop, financial crime persists as the sector’s foremost operational challenge worldwide, with identity fraud and facility misuse requiring sustained investment in detection capabilities.
Looking ahead, AI will move further into mainstream deployment, though adoption remains uneven across the industry. Stablecoins and tokenised deposits are gaining credibility as viable cross-border settlement infrastructure, particularly where cost and speed advantages prove compelling for merchants and PSPs. Meanwhile, open finance frameworks are maturing internationally, with VRP and API-based orchestration unlocking new forms of conditional, automated payments. For payments leaders, 2026 will reward those who balance technological ambition with robust fraud controls and an ability to navigate an increasingly complex global regulatory environment.
James has an MSc in Computational and Data Journalism and professional experience in market reporting and data analytics content. He applies this experience to the digital currencies, regulation, cross-border payments, and open banking working groups, distilling signal from noise to deliver meaningful insights from data.
Jack delivers strategic data analysis and research for payments intelligence, drawing on experience across finance, healthcare, and public sector consulting. With a proven track record in transforming complex datasets into actionable intelligence, he provides critical market insights that inform industry leaders
Benjamin leads the editorial direction and research for Payments Intelligence, delivering data-driven insights and strategic analysis for the payments industry. With a background in financial journalism and market intelligence, he translates complex trends into clear, actionable content for members, regulators and industry stakeholders.
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UK merchants expect agentic commerce to grow rapidly, but uncertainty around liability, fraud, and standards is slowing readiness.
Stablecoins are moving into mainstream finance, reshaping payments, trade, and regulation as institutions explore faster, programmable settlement.
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