Payments and Fintech Enter the Infrastructure Era

9 min read

In 2026, the focus is less on flashy consumer features and more on systemic improvements.

Many of the developments you usually hear about in the payments and fintech sectors are consumer-facing. Tap-to-pay, digital wallets and one-click checkout have dominated headlines over the years, just as crypto, blockchain and stablecoins have been the topics du jour in recent times. While the back-end, infrastructural aspects of payments may be less heralded, they are far more consequential, and we’re betting that these will come to the fore in 2026.   

It is this year that the payments industry (we’re bundling fintech into this) enters what we could call its infrastructure era: a time when the work of connecting rails, standardizing data and embedding intelligence finally begins to pay dividends.
The sheer size of the payments market demands attention to the plumbing underpinning it. Global cross-border payments are expected to surpass $250 trillion by 2027, according to Mastercard. Digital wallet users will exceed 5.2 billion globally by 2026, more than half the world's population. Think about that for a moment. 

According to Bain & Company, embedded financial service transactions in the U.S. are projected to exceed $7 trillion in 2026, up from $2.6 trillion in 2021. The volume of money moving through digital channels suggests that the old architecture cannot handle what comes next.

So, what is next? Open banking will live up to its potential. Payment orchestration will become even more commonplace in enterprise businesses than it already is. B2B payments will command the attention they’ve always deserved. And of course, no outlook would be complete without a mention or ten of AI, not only consumer applications but also the surging prevalence of agentic payments. 

Any business taking or making payments (which is all of them) should be conversant with these trends and thinking about how to take advantage of them this year. 

Open banking grows up

Let’s start with something that has demonstrated perpetual promise but never quite reached critical mass: open banking.

That dynamic is changing, and fast. As of 2025, over 40 countries have adopted open banking or broader open finance frameworks, while active open banking users in the U.K. alone hit 13.3 million in March 2025. The market is projected to reach $48 billion globally in 2026, continuing to grow at a double-digit rate.

The shift from cards to account-to-account (A2A) payments is accelerating, particularly in markets with instant payment infrastructure. McKinsey's Global Payments Report notes that lower-yield A2A rails are taking a growing share of global payments revenues, especially in Europe. In the U.K., open banking payments grew from 68 million in 2022 to 130 million in 2023, and recent figures suggest it remains on that trajectory. For merchants, A2A payments offer lower fees and faster settlement. For consumers, there is no card scheme as an intermediary, and there is more control. 

The combined appeal of these kinds of payments is driving broader adoption and wider applications. Open banking is evolving into open finance, covering investments, insurance and broader financial data. The European Commission is working to establish an Open Finance framework, while Australia's Consumer Data Right is expanding to cover non-bank lenders and buy-now-pay-later providers. Small businesses and borrowers with less-than-exemplary credit scores may benefit as lenders gain deeper insights into creditworthiness through permissioned data. The API has become the connective tissue of modern finance.

Orchestration becomes table stakes

Speaking of APIs, it used to be a herculean task for businesses to manage connections to different payment providers, servicers and acquirers within their platforms. Then payment orchestration emerged as a differentiator, reducing complexity, centralizing control and increasing per-transaction efficiency.

However, in 2026, orchestration is now the baseline expectation for any business operating at scale. Everyone has an orchestration layer, but is yours intelligent enough to optimize in real time?

A recent IXOPAY article captures this shift succinctly: by 2026, they say, “payment orchestration platforms will shift from routing transactions to orchestrating trust,” becoming the neutral layer that makes commerce work. Trust orchestration handles stakeholder identities (including AI agents, see more below) across multiple providers, validates legitimacy and manages consumer and transaction trust. The infrastructure that enables this new kind of orchestration—network tokens, virtual cards, programmable credentials—will be the default for new merchants and an upgrade path for existing ones.

Companies with strong orchestration capabilities report lower authorization decline rates, reduced fraud losses and faster settlement. The ability to failover between processors, route by geography or currency, and apply machine-learning models to optimize acceptance has become essential to margin protection. For businesses still processing transactions without an advanced orchestration layer, 2026 is the year the competitive gap becomes visible.

B2B payments finally get deserved attention

If orchestration is becoming commonplace, then optimizing business-to-business flows may be the new competitive advantage. B2B payments represent a market that is many times larger than consumer transactions, yet much of it still runs on legacy rails and outdated processes. This stubborn adherence to antiquated systems and approaches leads to fraud; the 2025 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey found that 79% of organizations experienced attempted or actual payments fraud last year. Checks (what is more legacy tech than a check?) remained the most vulnerable method, with 63% of organizations facing check fraud in 2024.

Despite the rise in check-related fraud, 75% of organizations still have no plans to reduce their use, according to the same survey. For many, the problem is not a lack of interest in modernization but the weight of supplier habits and internal processes. The gulf between consumer payment advances and corporate accounts payable realities could hardly be wider.

Expect that gap to narrow in 2026.

Millennials and Gen Z now make up more than half of the U.S. workforce, and they grew up using tap-to-pay and managing money on their phones. They expect the same experience in their professional lives: mobile-friendly, automated, intuitive.

Suppliers are also rethinking who gets to use which payment methods. High-value accounts receive more flexible options: virtual cards, real-time payments and variable recurring payments. Low-margin customers get steered toward lower-cost rails like ACH. Alas, the era of one-size-fits-all B2B payments is ending.

The obligatory AI section

Every payments conference for the past three years has featured AI prominently on the agenda, and it is hard to think of a payments report in the same timeframe that hasn’t touted AI as a sea change for the industry. This year, we think we’ll finally start to separate hype from actual returns, and it’ll be on the back of big data. For example, Mastercard processed nearly 160 billion transactions in 2024, and that data is now feeding AI models with real-world applications, including personalization engines, fraud models and dynamic pricing systems that operate in real time.

Of course, the most consequential application won’t be these, nor chatbots, nor recommendation engines, but the rise of the AI agent. In 2025, generative AI proved that agentic commerce was more than a fancy, as agents began managing transactions on behalf of consumers and businesses. This will expand in 2026, but critically, so will the guardrails around it. The industry is focused on whether an agent is legitimate, how to strengthen authentication with agents to reduce fraud and how to capture intent in case an AI transaction goes awry.

Visa Group President Oliver Jenkyn warns that 2026 will "unfortunately see a material increase in the sophistication and volume of these AI-powered identity attacks. This escalation will herald a new AI battle for identity with increased investment, focus and partnership." 

The same technology that creates convenience for consumers also enables new attack vectors. Businesses must take precautions… and be prepared.

From cost center to revenue engine

Perhaps the most consequential shift in payments thinking has nothing to do with technology. It is the recognition that payments are no longer merely a cost of doing business but a strategic asset capable of generating revenue, data and competitive advantage.

The clearest expression of this shift is the rise of embedded finance. Platforms that embed payments keep users within their ecosystem rather than handing them off to a separate portal. This creates smoother experiences and unlocks revenue potential through interchange, rebates and value-added services. According to a 2024 State of Embedded Finance Report, revenue from embedded finance is expected to reach $89.59 billion annually by 2029, with a compound annual growth rate of 23.8%.

Virtual cards offer another revenue opportunity in the B2B sector. Finance teams that shift supplier payments from checks to virtual cards can earn rewards that offset costs or fund other initiatives. Real-time payments, once seen as a faster but more expensive option, are now being reframed as a tool to improve cash flow, reduce days sales outstanding and strengthen supplier relationships. Payments have become not a cost center, but a strategic revenue source. That’s nothing but good for the industry and for businesses that came to this realization early and acted accordingly. 

The payments landscape in 2026

If there is one overall trend in 2026, it is that payments are becoming more personalized, predictive and interoperable across traditional and new platforms, and that the often unglamorous work of building infrastructure, setting standards and forging partnerships is finally paying off. Open banking will continue to spread, tokenization will become the default, instant, intermediary-free payments will expand to more markets and use cases, and digital identity will become essential to trust.

None of this happens automatically. It will require legacy systems to sunset and new platforms and partnerships to rise in their place. Interoperability and scalability must become key strategic considerations, as will advanced data management and judicious application of AI where it can have the greatest impact. 

And to reap the full benefits of payments as a strategic asset rather than a cost center, businesses must consider how they approach payments from a marketing and visibility perspective.

Is it enough to offer customers a better checkout experience? Or should investments and improvements to the payment process have a prominent spot in corporate announcements and marketing materials? How businesses tell the story of their advanced approach to payments will do as much to determine how they fare in the infrastructure era as anything else. 

The payments industry has spent years promising a future that felt perpetually distant. 

In 2026, that future arrives. Where will your business be when it does, and who will know about it?

THINKINK’s stable of payments experts can help your brand answer those questions and get ready for the payments’ infrastructure era. Learn more about our work with global payment and fintech companies serving airlines, hospitality, retail, and travel brands—get in touch here.