Payment Trends to Watch Out for in 2026

From the invention of the credit card in 1950 to the launch of Paypal (PYPL +0.29%) in 1998, Venmo in 2009 and Stripe in 2011, the payments industry has been disrupted repeatedly – and come through stronger each time, even as individual players may rise and fall.

So what are the payments trends that finance leaders need to stay on top of in 2026? I’ve highlighted three major patterns that I’ve seen strengthening over the course of 2025 and expect will be defining the payments industry in 2026 and beyond.

The digital wallet revolution is just beginning

If you think digital wallets have already peaked, think again. The number of digital wallet users worldwide is due to increase by 35 percent over the next five years, reaching 6 billion users globally. Digital wallets dominate a whopping 83 percent of global digital spend as consumers move away from physical credit and debit cards.

But here’s what most people miss: This isn’t just about consumers tapping their phones at checkout. The real opportunity lies in what digital wallets enable – instant access to financial services for billions who’ve been locked out of traditional banking. In emerging markets especially, digital wallets are becoming the primary financial interface, leapfrogging over decades of brick-and-mortar infrastructure.

Digital wallets are currently most popular in the Asia-Pacific region, which leads the globe with 60 percent of wallet users worldwide. The embrace of digital wallets in this region is powering the continued growth of Chinese payment platforms Alipay and WeChatPay, which dominate the global market.

But this is not an isolated trend. It’s spreading westward, with global mobile payments transaction volume outside China steadily rising from $2 trillion in 2015 to $8.1 trillion in 2024. Indeed, Denmark and Sweden are the countries with the highest mobile payment adoption rates outside China.

Bottom line: Mobile wallets aren’t just a passing fad. They are leading a fundamental restructuring of how money moves.

Cross-border payments for businesses: It’s not just about banks (and SWIFT) anymore

It’s not just individual consumers who are seeking out nontraditional providers for cross-border payments – increasingly, it’s also businesses.

McKinsey has found that between 35% and 50% of small and medium enterprises and a similar share of mid-corporates have used a fintech or nontraditional provider in the past year for cross-border payments. In many cases, this exodus from traditional banking isn’t happening because businesses want to be early adopters – it’s happening because they’re tired of being tied down by SWIFT’s outdated infrastructure, which leads to costly and slow payments.

SWIFT was revolutionary when the international banking system launched in 1973. Today, it’s used by more than 11,000 banking institutions in over 200 countries – but it’s a relic of the past.

In an era where businesses and consumers alike expect instant gratification, asking businesses to wait days for international transfers while paying 3-5 percent in fees is simply untenable. The fact that SMEs are fleeing to fintechs signals not only that fintech innovation is cracking the code on fast, affordable and transparent cross-border payments but also that businesses are increasingly less likely to wait around for the old, clunky payment institutions of the past.

Stablecoins are no longer a crypto curiosity – they’re critical infrastructure

The most underestimated trend in payments isn’t coming from Silicon Valley or Wall Street. It’s coming from emerging markets where people are voting with their wallets.

The stablecoin market reached a new all-time high in October, with total market capitalization growing 3.64% to $308 billion, marking the 25th consecutive month of expansion.

Stablecoins are a cryptocurrency designed to maintain a stable value relative to a certain asset. Though stablecoins do pose some risk, they aim to maintain greater price stability than cryptocurrencies like the notoriously volatile Bitcoin (BTC -0.59%) because they are pegged to assets or asset categories like the U.S. dollar, G7 currencies or commodities like gold. They stand out in the payment ecosystem for the high transaction volume driven by genuine need for alternative infrastructure and systems.

Stablecoins are especially important in emerging markets where local currencies are unstable and people are looking for a reliable way to send, receive and hold funds. Businesses and consumers in developing countries are using stablecoins to enhance cross-border payments and preserve wealth even if the local currency becomes devalued. India is leading in overall and retail-sized cryptocurrency transactions, including stablecoins

So what’s next? Strategists at consulting firm Ernst & Young expect corporate stablecoin operations to develop over the coming year, and finance executives are looking to learn more about how stablecoins can help manage their corporate treasury functions more efficiently, EY principal Mark Nichols said recently.

Perhaps the greatest potential for stablecoins is resolving real-world problems like efficient business-to-business payments that require cross-border transfers. B2B cross-border payments make up about $40 trillion in global spend – bigger than the entire GDP of the United States, making this segment of the financial ecosystem an especially valuable and accessible audience for stablecoins. As stablecoins become more and more prevalent, increasing numbers of businesses are likely to jump into the fray to increase payment speed, reduce the cost and expand the target destinations that banks may not cover.

The common thread running through all three trends is clear: The future of payments belongs to infrastructure that’s fast, borderless, and accessible. Traditional institutions that fail to adapt will find themselves increasingly irrelevant, while those who embrace these shifts – whether by building digital wallet ecosystems, offering competitive cross-border solutions for B2B or integrating stablecoin capabilities – will capture the opportunities of tomorrow.