Cards and Pay by Bank: the rise of the multi-rail bank

ACI Worldwide will host an online webinar on 17 September 2026 to examine how cards and Pay by Bank are reshaping consumer payments and why banks, issuers and acquirers need a unified multi-rail operating model. The session is scheduled for 15:00 BST / 16:00 CEST / 10:00 EDT, and 247 people had registered ahead of the event.

Speakers listed for the panel include Dean Wallace, director of consumer payments modernization at ACI Worldwide, and Ramon Villarreal, global payments industry lead at Red Hat. Jane Cooper will serve as moderator.

Industry data prepared for the session shows global card transactions reached 776 billion in 2024 and are projected to reach about 1.1 trillion by 2029. Account-to-account (A2A) transactions are forecast to rise from roughly 60 billion in 2024 to more than 185 billion by 2029.

Topics scheduled for discussion include tokenisation, digital-wallet integration and how Pay by Bank changes consumer payment credentials and merchant acceptance economics. The organisers also list agent-initiated payment models such as Visa TAP, Mastercard Agent Pay and Google AP2 as items for examination.

Panelists plan to address the technical and operational work required to support multiple rails, including token management, digital-wallet integration and the architectures needed to run cards, A2A and agentic commerce together without fragmenting fraud controls, dispute handling or settlement processes.

The session will also cover regulatory and commercial pressures that affect issuer and acquirer profit and loss. Items on the agenda include reimbursement rules, merchant economics, implications for fraud prevention and consumer dispute rights as new rails and agent-initiated flows emerge.

Organisers present the current phase as one in which cards are being redefined as programmable, tokenised credentials used in digital wallets and embedded checkout, while Pay by Bank scales from a niche option into a structural component of the consumer payments mix.