Cards and Pay by Bank Reshape Multi-Rail Payments

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

Card credentials are increasingly tokenised and embedded in digital wallets and merchant checkout flows. Tokens can be programmed and used in payments initiated by third-party agents. Pay by Bank account-to-account options are expanding from niche use cases into wider acceptance in Europe and other regions.

Banks, card issuers and acquirers face technical and operational complexity to support multiple rails: card networks, digital wallets, payment initiation services and agent-led flows. Participants require a unified operating model that includes intelligent routing, token management and real-time decisioning.

Payments systems must manage credential lifecycles, apply dynamic routing rules and provide fallbacks between rails to preserve acceptance rates and control costs.

Tokenisation changes how credentials are stored and presented at checkout. Tokens can reduce fraud and affect fee structures and interchange calculations.

Pay by Bank shifts settlement toward direct bank-to-bank transfers, altering reimbursement flows, merchant pricing and issuer and acquirer profit-and-loss dynamics.

Agent-initiated commerce, including approaches such as Visa TAP, Mastercard Agent Pay and Google AP2, raises questions about authentication, liability allocation and the applicability of existing chargeback and refund processes.

Regulatory pressure on interchange, open banking standards and merchant economics influence how banks and payment processors allocate costs and revenues. Changes in consumer demand for faster checkout and near-instant settlement affect issuer and acquirer margins and require updated financial modelling.

ACI Worldwide convened a panel of industry experts to discuss these architectural and commercial changes and the operational requirements for multi-rail consumer payments.