Solutions
Advisory on the technologies and business models reshaping payments — open banking, embedded finance, agentic commerce, tokenisation, CBDC and digital wallet acceptance.
Account-to-account payments are gaining material traction as instant payment infrastructure matures across Europe. For merchants, A2A payments offer lower cost of acceptance than card rails, real-time settlement, and strong authentication by default. For acquirers, they represent both a competitive threat and an opportunity to extend the value proposition beyond card processing. The EU Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) requires all eurozone banks to send and receive instant payments, receive capability was mandated from January 2025, send capability from October 2025.
Embedded finance describes financial services, payments, lending, insurance, banking, delivered within non-financial platforms and applications. The B2B embedded finance market reached $4.1 trillion in 2026 and is projected to reach $15.6 trillion by 2030. For software platforms, marketplaces and enterprise SaaS businesses, embedding payments and financial products creates new revenue streams, increases user retention and reduces customer acquisition costs. For banks and payment providers, it represents a distribution model that reaches customers at the point of commercial activity rather than at a traditional financial services touchpoint.
Agentic commerce describes AI systems that autonomously execute purchasing decisions on behalf of users, searching, selecting, authorising and completing transactions without real-time human interaction. Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol, Mastercard's Agent Pay framework, Google's AP2 standard and Stripe's Machine Payments Protocol (launched March 2026) represent the emerging infrastructure layer for agent-initiated payments. The implications for merchants, acquirers and issuers are significant: existing authorisation models, fraud detection logic and chargeback frameworks were built for human-initiated transactions and require fundamental rethinking for agent-driven commerce.
Tokenisation, representing financial assets as digital tokens on distributed ledger infrastructure, is moving from proof-of-concept to commercial deployment. The ECB completed preparatory work on a digital euro in late 2025, Hong Kong's Project Ensemble entered pilot phase, and significant momentum is expected throughout 2026. For enterprises, tokenisation offers a direct route to real-time settlement, eliminating the counterparty exposure that accumulates in T+2 cycles. For financial institutions, it introduces new questions around custody, interoperability between private and public ledger networks, and integration with TARGET and SWIFT systems.
114 countries representing 98% of global GDP are actively exploring central bank digital currencies. The European Central Bank completed its technical preparatory work on a digital euro in late 2025 and expects the enabling regulation in 2026. The UAE launched mBridge transactions with China in late 2025. The Bank of England established its Digital Pound Lab to test use cases with industry partners. These developments create immediate commercial and strategic questions for banks, payment processors, fintech businesses and corporates, from how to position relative to CBDC distribution roles to how CBDC infrastructure will interact with existing card and account-based payment systems.
Speak directly with a specialist across any of these areas.