From strides in Stablecoins to AI shopping: Top payments trends for 2026

By Tareq MUHMOOD

AI, blockchain, and intelligent data use are rewriting the rules of global commerce. In Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA), technology innovation, evolving consumer behavior, and collaboration across the public and private sectors are driving transformative shifts in how people interact with the world – including how they pay and get paid. As people demand faster, safer, and more seamless experiences, the region is entering a pivotal moment in how we pay and get paid.

Against this backdrop of fast‑moving innovation, here are our top trends for payments in 2026.

Stablecoins hit their stride

Stablecoins – cryptocurrencies backed by fiat currency – are transforming a historically speculative asset into trusted global payment infrastructure. The potential for stablecoins to add to and complement the existing global payment ecosystem is enormous – especially for emerging markets and cross-border.

In regions such as Sub‑Saharan Africa, where remittances remain among the most expensive globally, stablecoins provide a faster, cheaper, and more reliable way to move money. Cross-border payouts in USD‑backed tokens reach recipients almost instantly, with lower fees and a more stable store of value.

At Visa, we’re helping accelerate this shift by integrating blockchain‑powered settlement into real‑world financial systems and digitizing the backend of money movement[1]. Through partners like Aquanow, we’re moving toward true 365-day settlement to meet rising demand for faster and more cost-effective cross border flows[2].

At the same time, emerging regulatory frameworks in parts of CEMEA[3] are fostering innovation, empowering financial institutions to move beyond the hype and scale real-world use cases. Going forward, policy will act as a catalyst for even more wide-reaching innovation, thriving on predictable and aligned regulation.

Agentic commerce moves mainstream

We have moved from face-to-face commerce, to eCommerce, to mobile commerce, and now on to agentic commerce where agents transact on behalf of consumers and businesses. In 2026, AI-supported shopping will become very real for all of us, and agentic commerce will naturally follow.

Imagine opening your ChatGPT app, but now there is a new button: “Buy for Me.” When you click it and program your agent, three things happen:

• Enabling payments: Agents will be equipped with tokenized and authenticated payment details, ensuring transactions remain safe and protected, with agent verification able to identify good bots from bad.
• Personalizing preferences: Agents will adapt to your shopping behaviors and patterns using secure data inputs, enabling them to know, “What option best matches my needs?”
• Controlling spend: Consumers set the ground rules, restricting transactions to specific categories or budgets – for example, “spend only on economy seats, not over $500 per purchase, and only with my preferred airline”

As top brands bet big on AI-fuelled shopping experiences moving mainstream, the natural next step into full agentic commerce will gain momentum in 2026. Visa is providing key infrastructure and tools now in partnership with ecosystem partners to enable the evolution.

We recently announced our strategic collaboration with Aldar to complete the first end-to-end voice-enabled agentic payment in the region. This introduces an initial agentic use case focused on routine and repetitive transactions being streamlined through AI agents[4]. We’re continuing our work with issuers, merchants, and ecosystem players to roll out more use cases and, scale the next era of commerce.

The fight for identity enters the AI era

As AI drives smarter commerce, it also opens the door to new risks. We are shifting from an era of stolen transactions to stolen identities, with fraudsters using generative AI to create deepfakes, synthetic IDs, and hyper-realistic scams – threatening trust at scale.

Simultaneously, the cost of false declines (when legitimate transactions are rejected due to rigid risk controls) amounts to billions of dollars in losses annually – a burden on merchants and consumers alike. This calls for a critical balancing act: delivering seamless experiences while ensuring robust security.

Our 2025 Stay Secure report shows that 97% of consumers in markets in CEMEA have taken measures to secure their digital payments[5]. This vigilance needs to increase in the era of AI. However, fighting AI-driven fraud will also require advanced tools in 2026. Biometric authentication, using fingerprints or facial recognition, can offer a more secure replacement for traditional passwords. Meanwhile, AI risk models will become essential for detecting complex fraud patterns.

Importantly, this battle cannot be fought in isolation. Collaboration across banks, fintechs, merchants, and governments will be key to safeguarding trust in this new era of commerce.

Goodbye manual guest checkout

Gone are the days of searching for wallets, typing 16-digit card numbers, and entering shipping details every time you shop. This is being replaced with tokenized, biometric, and device-based authentication, maintaining convenience without compromising security.

Multi-step guest checkout is disappearing in ecommerce, dropping from nearly half of Visa transactions in 2019 to just 16% in 2025, marking another major step toward frictionless, secure, and efficient digital commerce.

In addition to the security and convenience benefits for consumers, a streamlined checkout experience has a positive impact for merchants by removing friction and reducing cart abandonment. Visa’s Checkout Friction report in Jordan shows that 47% of consumers find it frustrating to repeatedly enter card details, and more than half say they would shop more often if a single, streamlined checkout option were available[6].

The beginning of the end for cash?

While cash remains prevalent in many parts of our region, the curve is finally bending to bring more people into the fold: 2026 is projected to be the first year in history where half of the world’s consumer payments will be made with card credentials^[7].

This is a significant step toward reducing reliance on cash and enabling financial inclusion. We are seeing the digitization of the “last mile” of micro-transactions in historical cash havens, while collaborative efforts among solution providers, governments, grassroots innovators, and fintechs bridge the gap between cash-heavy economies and the global digital network. In CEMEA, we have seen cash’s share of personal spending drop from 80% to 60% in just five years[8], marking a shift where digital is increasingly becoming the default, not the alternative.

With this year setting a new benchmark for credential-based consumer payments, the collective mission is to ensure that everyone – banked, underbanked, and unbanked – has a secure entry point into the economy, bolstering access and financial inclusion.

The need for agility is more urgent than ever

The era of hyper-personalization is unfolding briskly. Today, financial institutions and merchants are tasked with shifting toward the “Segment of One,” where every customer is treated as an individual rather than being grouped into broad demographic categories. Technologies like tokenization allow institutions to harness and analyze consumer preferences while safeguarding their privacy.

But trust alone isn’t enough – hyper-personalization demands agility. As consumer expectations rise and competition intensifies, financial institutions and merchants must move faster than ever. Most consumers today are willing to switch banks for a better digital experience[9], signaling that the players who can roll out new features or updates in weeks – not months – are best positioned to win. Meanwhile, the definition of “seller” is expanding to include millions of creators and small merchants, all of whom need flexible, seamless omnichannel experiences to stay relevant.

This responsiveness can only be achieved through modern, cloud-native, and microservices-based architecture, which can offer the speed and scalability needed to adapt quickly. In this new landscape, institutions that invest in overhauling legacy systems to adopt agile infrastructure will be the ones to build lasting connections with their customers in 2026 and beyond.

These trends and predictions are just the beginning. In 2026, rising expectations and rapid digitization will shape a more intelligent, inclusive, and effectively borderless payments landscape.

From B2B flows to digital wallets and micro‑merchants, new ways to pay will continue to expand, making 2026 a pivotal year for the future of payments.

The writer is the Regional President, CEMEA, Visa

[1] https://corporate.visa.com/en/sites/visa-perspectives/innovation/emerging-technologies-for-financial-inclusion.html

[2] https://www.aquanow.com/news-insights/aquanow-partners-with-visa-to-enable-faster-settlement-using-stablecoins

[3] https://www.pwc.com/m1/en/publications/2025/docs/unlocking-the-future-of-finance-with-stablecoins.pdf

[4] https://ae.visamiddleeast.com/en_AE/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases/prl-18122025.html

[5]https://km.visamiddleeast.com/en_KM/pay-with-visa/security-and-assistance/stay-secure-2025.html

[6] Visa Checkout Friction Report Jordan

[7] https://corporate.visa.com/en/sites/visa-perspectives/trends-insights/2026-predictions.html

[8] Visa Data PCE % CEMEA 2020 – 2024

[9]   https://corporate.visa.com/en/sites/visa-perspectives/innovation/commerce-in-age-of-acceleration.html

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