NFC World

Christmas 2025 may be remembered as the moment agentic commerce truly entered the mainstream, with new research from Checkout.com signalling a decisive shift toward agentic AI. Agentic commerce to transform shopping Nearly half of consumers surveyed say they expect to use an AI agent to support their festive purchasing this year — a striking indication

Dutch payments processor Mollie is on the brink of acquiring UK fintech GoCardless in what would be one of Europe’s most consequential private-market payments deals this year. According to people close to the discussions, the transaction could be announced within days, marking the culmination of months of strategic manoeuvring by both companies as competition intensifies

The pressure on payment service providers to find ways of dealing with the burgeoning demand of real-time payment settlement services has been tremendous, with real-time transaction volumes rising 42.2% across the year to $266 billion in 2023. Accelerating real-time payment adoption The pace of such a transformation has seen most institutions scurrying to modernise old

On 07 November 2025, the Payments Vision Delivery Committee (PVDC) published its “Strategy for Future Retail Payments Infrastructure.” As a quick refresher, the PVDC was set up in November 2024 to realise the National Payments Vision (NPV) – which set out the ambition for a world-leading payments ecosystem – and comprises representatives  from HM Treasury (HMT), the Bank

Think about your smartphone. Now imagine it’s not just a digital wallet, but the entire checkout counter. No big machines to buy, no setup headaches. Just tap your phone, pay, and walk away. Tap-to-Pay: Can smartphones replace POS That’s Tap-to-Pay on Phone, or Tap-to-Phone for short. It’s been catching on more and more, especially as

Stablecoins have long been marketed as the digital bridge between volatile crypto assets and the perceived solidity of fiat money. Yet their accelerating adoption — particularly in the US — is raising difficult questions for the rest of the world about who really benefits from this transformation of money, and at what cost. Stablecoins deserve

In 2024, commercial gaming revenue in the US hit a record of around $72 billion, the fourth straight year of all-time highs, according to the American Gaming Association. A growing share of that total now comes from digital products. A world of one-tap online slots Online casinos, table games, and especially online slots have become

Worldline has taken another decisive step in reshaping its business around core European payment services, agreeing to divest its PaymentIQ orchestration platform to Swedish investment firm Incore Invest in a deal valued at approximately €160 million. The transaction, expected to close in Q1 2026 following the required works council consultation, forms part of Worldline’s wider

Sweden boasts a stable, highly sophisticated and digitalised modern economy, with one of the lowest percentages of cash usage anywhere in the world. Around one in ten in-store payments in Sweden are made in cash, and it’s in such short supply that a law came into effect in 2021 requiring major banks to provide adequate

A2A payments have long promised to rebalance the economics of digital commerce. This year, their ascent has begun to look less like a thought experiment and more like a structural shift. Pay by Bank comes of age At Open Banking Expo UK & Europe, Token.io chief executive Todd Clyde captured the mood succinctly: Pay by