Mastercard  announced the launch of its Agentic Payments Program, Mastercard Agent Pay. The groundbreaking solution integrates with agentic AI to revolutionize commerce. Mastercard Agent Pay will deliver smarter, more secure, and more personal payments experiences to consumers, merchants, and issuers.

The program introduces Mastercard Agentic Tokens, which build upon proven tokenization capabilities that today power global commerce solutions like mobile contactless payments, secure card-on-file, and Mastercard Payment Passkeys, as well as programmable payments like recurring expenses and subscriptions. This helps unlock an agentic commerce future where consumers and businesses can transact with trust, security, and control.

The future of commerce is on display at the Visa Global Product Drop with powerful AI-enabled advancements allowing consumers to find and buy with AI plus the introduction of new strategic partnerships and product innovations.  

“As new ways to pay emerge, they need to run on a network that is always on – that is safe, secure, scalable and relentlessly innovating,” said Visa CEO Ryan McInerney. “We are taking the power of our network and our decades-long expertise to bring new products and solutions that will transform commerce and bring trust and security to AI-enabled payments.”   

Cross border payments are friction traps — slow, costly and lacking transparency. A new PYMNTS report, “ The Treasury Management Playbook: Spotlight on Cross-Border Payments ,” a collaboration with  Citi, examines the impact of real time payments in removing friction and opening new markets for corporates eager to find new customers.

This report explores one of the topics that’s been gaining more and more ground in the payments industry. This edition is designed to help you navigate the complexities of the Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) ecosystem, featuring contributions from key stakeholders – consultants, merchants, and service providers. 

The report addresses pressing industry questions while offering key strategies to help businesses worldwide succeed. It is a perfect read for professionals looking to tackle the challenges of the global financial sector more effectively, providing valuable information for those seeking to forge strategic partnerships in specific areas.

Fraud is becoming more expansive. Merchants reported experiencing 4 different types of fraud, up from prior years. Read the 2025 Payments & Fraud Report to see how fraud evolved in 2024 – and how merchants are handling it. The Global Payments & Fraud Report is an educational, free report compiled by the Merchant Risk Council, Verifi and Cybersource that conveys transparent and unbiased research. The report outlines the latest industry fraud data and management methods used by merchants.

The first edition of the Global Ecommerce Report – Tackling Challenges and International Expansion with Strategic Partnerships explores the hottest trends in the payments and ecommerce industries. This inaugural issue aims to serve as a guide when navigating these complex landscapes. The report includes contributions from key stakeholders – top industry consultants, merchants, and payment service providers (PSPs) – and seeks to address the most pressing questions in the space while providing key strategies to help businesses worldwide succeed. 

Online and e-commerce payments are booming, growing five times faster than in-store payments. However, this dramatic shift brings challenges for merchants, issuers, and end users, including security concerns, higher drop-off rates, increased operational costs, and missed revenue opportunities for banks.

It has been estimated that 70.19% of online shopping carts will have been abandoned worldwide during the course of 2024. Key reasons include reluctance to create new accounts (26%), lack of trust in site security (25%), and lengthy checkout processes (22%). To address these issues, in 2017 EMVCo defined a framework for secure remote commerce and a unified secure checkout experience, supported by major payment networks like Visa, Mastercard, Amex, and Discover. 

This report from IMRG and Ecommpay, has revealed the key checkout changes that could boost conversion rates. While the average conversion rate stands at 58%, there is a significant distance between rates for single-page (61%) and multi-page checkouts (56%) as well as between guest shoppers (52%) and registered customers (64%). With 59% of orders placed by guest customers, improving the guest checkout experience could considerably improve overall conversions.