Three different regions made their movements this month to reduce dependence on the two global companies that process most of the world’s card payments. On the surface, they may look unrelated, but together, a pattern emerges where governments and central banks build various types of alternative payment rails instead of relying on Visa and Mastercard.
The rules governing who can buy what, from whom, and under what authority are being rewritten by trade groups and card networks racing to keep pace with software that shops on its own.
Although Visa, Mastercard, SWIFT, and other payment infrastructure providers have not announced firm migration deadlines, governments are beginning to establish them. The U.S. federal government’s goal of transitioning critical cryptographic systems by around 2030 is widely viewed as an important benchmark that could influence planning across the broader financial services ecosystem, including payment networks, PSPs, […]
An AI payment agent is software, usually built on a large language model, that can complete a purchase or transfer funds on a person’s or business’s behalf without a human clicking “buy” for each transaction. This is distinct from an AI shopping assistant, which searches, compares, and recommends products but hands the final checkout step […]
Visa is eliminating approximately 2,600 positions, or about 7% of its global workforce, in a restructuring move. The payment company’s CEO Ryan McInerney outlined it in a staff memo sent Tuesday, July 28. The cuts will primarily affect the technology and product teams.
The race to build the payment infrastructure of the AI-agent economy is entering a new phase, with global payment networks and technology companies competing to define how machines will identify, authorize and execute transactions.
Visa has unveiled a new institutional stablecoin platform, marking another step in the payment giant’s expansion beyond traditional card processing towards blockchain-based financial infrastructure. The new tool is not a consumer payment product. The initiative is designed to support institutional participants managing stablecoin operations at scale instead.
Merchants may be significantly underestimating the role of friendly fraud in the chargeback ecosystem, according to the newly released 2026 Chargeback Field Report from Chargebacks911. While merchants surveyed for the report estimated that friendly fraud accounts for an average of 43.8% of their chargebacks, Visa has previously estimated that approximately 75% of chargebacks are linked […]
Nuvei has completed a live agentic-commerce proof of concept with Visa, merchant technology provider Arvato Systems, and fashion brand Kings and Priests.
Worldline and ING have completed a live, end-to-end agentic payment transaction with Visa in Germany. The transaction used Visa Payment Passkeys and biometric authentication within existing Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements. Worldline and ING have joined Visa’s Agentic Ready Programme as part of the announcement.
A coalition of more than 140 companies from different areas of financial services has agreed to back Open USD (OUSD), a new stablecoin announced on June 30, 2026, and governed by an independent entity called Open Standard. The joint initiative brings together banks, payments networks, crypto platforms and technology firms with the stated goal of […]
Visa is expanding well beyond its traditional role as a payments provider with the global launch of Visa Destinations, a new digital travel platform designed to help consumers discover, plan and book trips while making the most of their Visa card benefits.
Thousands attended the opening day of iFX EXPO International as industry leaders, global brands, and financial innovators gathered in Limassol for networking, business meetings, and discussions on the future of financial services.
The UNCHAIN Festival presented its fifth edition on 17 June 2026 inside the medieval walls of Oradea Fortress. This year, the fintech event drew the attention of more than 1,000 banking, payments, and insurance leaders from across Central and Eastern Europe, who gathered in Romania for the two networking days curated by organisers as a […]
From the 16th to the 18th of June, iFX EXPO International is set to bring together some of the most influential voices in online trading, fintech, payments, liquidity, digital assets and financial services for an agenda built around the industry’s most important conversations.
Visa has announced a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to integrate its global payment network into OpenAI’s products and platforms, positioning the two companies as early infrastructure partners in the emerging agentic commerce space. The announcement was made at the Visa Payments Forum in San Francisco on 10 June 2026.
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