Cards, Pay by Bank and the rise of multi-rail payments

Finextra and ACI Worldwide hosted an online webinar at 15:00 BST on September 17, 2026. The session was moderated by Jane Cooper and featured Dean Wallace, director of consumer payments modernization at ACI Worldwide, and Ramon Villarreal, global payments industry lead for global financial services at Red Hat. The panel discussed changes in cards, Pay by Bank and account‑to‑account rails and the operational implications for banks, issuers and acquirers.

Panelists pointed to market data showing global card transactions totaled about 776 billion in 2024 and are projected to reach roughly 1.1 trillion by 2029. Account‑to‑account transaction volumes were estimated at about 60 billion in 2024 and are forecast to exceed 185 billion by 2029.

Speakers described cards evolving into programmable, tokenised credentials used in digital wallets, embedded checkout flows and agent‑initiated commerce. They added that tokenisation changes how credentials are stored and presented and alters acceptance economics for merchants and acquirers. The panel highlighted effects on settlement timing and fraud‑management processes.

Pay by Bank was described as moving from a niche checkout option to a larger component of consumer payments in Europe and other markets. Panelists noted A2A rails can offer lower acceptance costs for merchants and different settlement profiles for issuers and acquirers, while cards continue to provide broad acceptance networks, dispute protections and ubiquity.

The panel outlined operational challenges and recommended a single, resilient, intelligence‑led operating model to run multiple rails. Such a model should support tokenisation, handle diverse credential formats, route transactions across rails and maintain uptime and security.

Agentic commerce examples cited included Visa TAP, Mastercard Agent Pay and Google AP2. Panelists observed these approaches create new agent‑initiated payment patterns that will affect fraud profiles, dispute rights and infrastructure. Supporting those flows will require changes to authorization flows, liability models and merchant integration.

Non‑technical factors discussed included regulatory rules on disputes and consumer protections, changes to reimbursement rules and merchant economics. Panelists noted these factors can shift where costs and revenues sit across issuers and acquirers and influence investment decisions.

About 261 people registered for the online event. The webinar focused on technical and operational implications for firms managing multiple payment rails and the interaction between tokenisation, digital wallets and account‑to‑account rails.