Cards and Pay by Bank Reshape Consumer Payments

A 2026 webinar hosted with ACI Worldwide convened industry experts to examine how card payments and account-to-account Pay by Bank are changing consumer payments and what banks, issuers and acquirers must do to support multiple rails.

Global card transactions reached 776 billion in 2024 and are forecast to reach 1.1 trillion by 2029. Account-to-account Pay by Bank volumes were 60 billion in 2024 and are projected to rise to more than 185 billion by 2029.

Speakers described cards as being redefined into programmable, tokenised credentials that live in digital wallets, embedded checkout flows and agent-initiated commerce. Tokenisation replaces static card numbers with software-controlled tokens that can be routed, updated and managed inside wallets and merchant systems.

Panelists identified agent-initiated commerce models, including Visa TAP, Mastercard Agent Pay and Google AP2, where a third party initiates transactions on a consumer’s behalf. These models change where transactions start and can affect infrastructure requirements, fraud exposure and the allocation of liability and dispute rights.

Participants said banks, issuers and acquirers will need a unified, resilient and intelligence-led operating model to process card, Pay by Bank and agent-initiated flows. That includes routing logic to select the lowest-cost or highest-conversion rail, monitoring systems that detect fraud across rails, and settlement and reconciliation systems that handle different clearing cycles and reimbursement rules.

Regulation and merchant economics were discussed as factors that shape issuer and acquirer profit and loss. Reimbursement rules, interchange regulation and merchant contracting affect which rails merchants prefer and which generate margin for issuers. Pay by Bank’s lower acceptance costs and direct settlement model could influence merchant choices, while reimbursement frameworks and regulatory oversight will affect the speed of any change.

Jane Cooper, researcher and moderator of the session, described the cards-versus-Pay-by-Bank debate as “outdated” and urged attention to an integrated payments landscape. Dean Wallace, Director of Consumer Payments Modernization at ACI Worldwide, said cards are “not disappearing” and are becoming tokenised credentials at the centre of wallets and embedded checkout.

Panelists listed immediate technical and commercial tasks for banks and payments firms: update acceptance systems to handle tokenised credentials, build routing and orchestration layers that include Pay by Bank options, and set commercial terms and compliance controls for agent-initiated flows. The discussion focused on practical steps to adapt existing payment stacks to coexist with multiple rails.