It was great to be part of the MD's Fintech26 event, hearing about so many areas of key developments across the industry.
Worldpay presented on the next decade in payments, primarily from a consumer perspective and how that will impact merchants and businesses' payment offerings.
Our findings are drawn from Worldpay's annual Global Payment Report 2026 (link at the bottom). It's the largest and most comprehensive global publication in the payments space, and an area that Worldpay leads from a data & insights perspective.
As we become an increasingly cashless society, with even card usage on the decline, consumers expect the fastest, most seamless checkout journeys possible. This is typically enabled by a wide array of payment methods, largely being dominated by digital wallets - Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal being the primary methods in the UK.
Globally, in markets like India, China, Poland, Brazil, Thailand and more, there is a huge push to drive to "superapps!"
Apps such as Unipay, We Chat Pay, Ali Pay, Blik, Pix and Wero, are beginning to dominate their respective consumer bases, having more than 90% market penetration.
As businesses look to stay competitive and deliver the greatest UX, these digital wallets will have to be enabled, to sustain customer acquisition and retention for merchants.
Looking towards AI, it seems the majority of the MD community is in agreement with Worldpay, which is to say that whilst AI is definitively part of the future, there is currently a large gap in trust.
As things stand, agentic commerce is yet to have all the kinks worked out of it, leaving a window for fraud, unauthorised or incorrect purchases and a lack of unified processes across the payments landscape.
However, whilst there may be a trust gap today, AI WILL be a part of the consumer journey in the not-too-distant future. This is evidenced by the ongoing partnerships with payments providers like Worldpay and PayPal, and flagship AI providers OpenAI and Google.
Worldpay has now built a universal adaptor in order to operate across the AI spectrum, with a waiting list of merchants to onboard.
It must be noted that guard rails are being built in place, to ensure consumer trust and reduce fraudulent opportunities. A few areas to mention would be tokenised agentic commerce protocols, spending rules and revocable agentic permissions.
Overall, digital wallets and agentic commerce are the two major trends across the next decade, that businesses will need to facilitate to supply the consumer demand.
For more detail and info, please download the report below, or reach out and I'll be happy to share some insights.
