For financial services companies and PSPs, 2025 was a year defined by turbulence. In this 2026 PSP Survival Guide we look at how payments businesses can build on the lessons of last year and embrace the major trends of today.
Last year, maintaining success meant building operational resilience in the face of uncertainty, choosing the right banking partners, and staying agile to remain competitive in a difficult sector. AI also came of age and went from being the hot topic everyone was talking about, but not doing much with, to a plausible reality for most businesses.
This is probably still the biggest topic in 2026, but a major shift is taking place. It’s no longer about adoption. It’s about execution.
Yes, it’s clear that AI has a role to play, but how can it be deployed effectively in your organisation to solve important challenges? This is the question many payments businesses (indeed businesses across financial services) will be attempting to answer in 2026.
Other areas of execution to consider are around adapting to changing regulations and integrating with payment rails and local payment methods. We unpack all of that here.
What’s changed in payments and fintech since 2025 – and what hasn’t
In 2025 we discussed the pressures of a funding downturn, geopolitical volatility, and keeping pace with regulatory change. The big differentiators and strategies for success included service quality and swift issue resolution as well as the need for stress testing and resilience in the wake of volatility.
We also examined how many PSPs and financial intermediaries are grappling with the pace of innovation. This includes the need for an agile, scalable architecture and reliable access to payment rails and banking liquidity.
None of this has gone away, but as 2026 gets underway, some things are developing. Customer expectations are shaped by a faster, more efficient consumer experience. As our CEO Will Marwick pointed out in a recent podcast interview, fast cross-border payments are now “table-stakes”, as real time payments become more accessible both at home and through international rails like SEPA.
An increasing number of organisations have also taken a step further into the realm of accepting stablecoins and more will be looking seriously at how AI can make a difference to their bottom line, despite the potential risks associated with adopting new technologies.
A balance is obviously needed and 2026 seems like the prime opportunity to safely deliver at scale.
Four major trends to consider in 2026.
We’ve gathered four of the biggest things happening in payments and fintech right now and looked at how they might develop this year.
1. AI in payments – unavoidable but underused
The message is clear; AI is both an opportunity and a challenge. Poorly implemented it can be a drain on resources and present operational risks, as well as being a threat to business security. Adopted as part of a well-rounded strategy however, it does have the potential to make your business more competitive.
According to the Payments Association’s 2025 state of payments survey, 30% of decision makers in the industry cited Financial Crime as their biggest concern in the year ahead. Fraud volumes are rising – a 2025 Financial Crime Report from Kroll found that over 70% of UK business executives expect financial crime risk to increase in the next 12 months. AI-powered cybercrime is anticipated as one of the main drivers of this.
But AI adoption amongst payments companies is also rising. The survey found that 54% are planning to adopt AI in the next 12 months, comfortably beating any other forms of tech adoption in the survey. According to Juniper Research, “by 2030, UK banks will invest over £1.8 billion ($2.5 billion) into GenAI technologies; seeking gains in productivity, cost-efficiency, and service excellence.”
The current existing use cases are clear. As much as AI can be a threat in some instances it can also be used in fraud detection. Predictive, pattern-based prevention could be a way of fighting fire with fire, assuming you are able to implement properly or work with trusted third-party providers of this technology.
It may also be used in automating internal processes, compliance and data enrichment. McKinsey research found that “companies including PayPal use AI to analyse, predict, and optimize payment routes based on factors such as transaction costs, processing times, and network congestion.”
Still, implementation is not straightforward. The cost and challenge of fitting this around existing infrastructure can be significant and that’s assuming you have a solid business case for going down this route. Finding out what that is and potentially concluding that lower adoption is needed in the short term may be the first port of call.
Regardless, human oversight of these tools is still essential. Particularly in financial services and where client money is involved, AI tools need handling to make absolutely certain that the correct action is being taken.
2. Regulation as both constraint and catalyst
The next biggest concern for industry leaders according to the Payments Association survey, was the prospect of keeping pace with regulation. But as much of a challenge as this may be, it could also be a catalyst to growth.
Several noteworthy pieces of regulation either came into force in 2025 or are anticipated for the year ahead. Consumer Duty is now embedded at the heart of payments businesses, in theory encouraging innovation that delivers a more customer friendly offering. This also leads into changes that affect products like Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) with deferred payment credit agreements falling under the FCA regulatory regime from 15 July 2026.
As of November 2025, ISO 20022 is now the globally accepted benchmark for financial messaging, enabling payments data to provide more detailed and consistent information. Improved data quality of payments could lead to a better customer experience and enable better reconciliation, more automated processing and improved liquidity management across payment flows. As of 9 October 2025, EU Instant Payments Regulation (IPR) requires EU PSPs to offer payers Verification of Payee (VoP) prior to authorising a credit transfer. EU PSPs offering euro credit transfer must also offer instant credit transfers to customers and ensure that charges for instant credit transfers do not exceed charges for standard credit transfers. It may not be long before there is a mandate for supporting stablecoins.
Much of this is done in the name of increasing transparency and making a better experience for the end user, which must be celebrated. The opportunity is in seeing how these regulations can push your business to improve.
The challenge is in implementation and staying agile as new regulations come in. Smaller businesses running on tighter budgets, can find it difficult to adapt to these changes. It will be interesting to see how certain electronic payment firms cope with stricter rules from the FCA, surrounding customer funds, planned for this year. Inclusion for end users is important but so is inclusion for businesses offering new and innovative services to those end users.
To tackle this, regulation needs to be part of design from the beginning, not a final checkbox, once everything has been built. This can be achieved by finding the right partners in the ecosystem and collaborating with those who are a few steps further ahead.
3. Cross-border payments: Where growth meets reality
Cross-border payments remain one of the most compelling growth opportunities for PSPs in 2026. Demand continues to rise as many SMEs operate internationally by default rather than exception. But while expectations around speed are increasing, chasing “real-time” for its own sake is secondary to maintaining transparency and clean integration into existing systems.
That distinction is important. Research from Swift shows that while 15% of SMEs expect payments to arrive within seconds, “transparency and payment process integration were seen as most important” when considering a payment provider. In practice, visibility and control often outweigh marginal gains in speed, particularly when managing liquidity across currencies.
Operationally, this is where ambition meets reality. Plugging into local payment schemes is increasingly a differentiator, but it requires more than technical connectivity. Infrastructure decisions, regulatory alignment and local expertise all play a role. Direct participation in these schemes can reduce costs and improve settlements, but it is complex to implement and maintain, especially across multiple jurisdictions. The goal in 2026 will be greater alignment with and wider acceptance of local payment methods.
Trust remains powerful. Yes, faster settlement and lower fees naturally drive switching behaviour, but 87% of SMEs still explore their bank’s offering first when making a cross-border payment. This speaks to the role that an established banking relationship can have. Partnering with the right people and building trust in your institution is as much a key to success in 2026 as building out the infrastructure required to make those payments happen.
4. Open banking, tokenisation and the new payments baseline
Increasingly, what were once emerging trends are now anticipated or desired by customers.
Open banking is one of them, with adoption in payments continuing to accelerate. According to the FCA, in the UK alone, more than 15 million users now benefit from open banking services, with payment volumes growing year on year. What previously had major implications for consumers, is increasingly relevant for businesses too, particularly where real-time visibility and improved cash flow are concerned.
Tokenisation is following a similar trajectory. Once positioned primarily as a security feature, it is now being weighed up as an efficiency and revenue enabler. By supporting safer credential handling and instant commerce models, tokenisation allows payments to move faster without increasing exposure to fraud risks.
Taken alongside the benefits that ISO 20022 intends to mandate, these developments suggest that as time goes on, these capabilities become less of a differentiator. For any PSP looking to scale, these should certainly be some considerations. That said, it’s hard to ignore the power of doing certain things well. Simply bolting on new capabilities without a thought for how it will positively impact your specific customer base is unlikely to be the best step forward.
Scaling in 2026 means choosing where to be excellent
The defining challenge for PSPs in 2026 is focus. There are plenty of opportunities to innovate with new technology, but the demands on resource that come with it are not insignificant. No organisation can pursue every initiative at once.
The PSPs that scale successfully this year will be those that make deliberate choices. They will invest in AI with discipline rather than enthusiasm alone, recognising both its potential and its limitations. They will treat regulation as a structural reality, not a temporary hurdle, and build trust alongside speed rather than in place of it.
They’ll partner with those who are already at the coal face. At IFX, we’re committed to cross-border growth and supporting payments businesses with not only faster payments and connectivity but also transparency, and human service.
Ambition matters, but execution is what sets organisations apart.
The contents of this article do not constitute financial advice and are provided for general information purposes only.
While the content is based on information believed to be accurate at the time of publication, no guarantee is provided.
Links to third-party websites are included for convenience only, and IFX Payments holds no responsibility for the content, services, products, or materials on those sites.