What shapes consumer transactions and payment technologies, and where is it going?
Rapid changes in technology, regulation, and consumer behavior continue to reshape the payments industry. Javelin’s payments research team tracks commercial and consumer payment trends, evaluates emerging payment technologies, and anticipates what’s next. Through unbiased research, data-driven insights, and actionable advice, we help financial institutions, payments providers, and technology companies develop strategies that position them for success in a rapidly evolving market.
Payments Research
Reports
Embedded Risk: Risk Management Finds a Home in the Tech Stack
As payments become faster and automated, risk management is moving from the sidelines to the center of transaction processing. Real-time payments, open banking, and agentic AI are forcing banks to rethink how fraud, compliance, identity, and aut...
Finding Opportunity in Uncertainty: A Macro Framework for Supply Chain Finance Targeting in 2026
Supply chain finance opportunity is not distributed evenly across industries or supplier populations. This report shows how providers can use public U.S. economic and industry data to identify where cash cycles are lengthening, liquidity is weak...
3D Secure’s Next Act: From Checkout Friction to Trust Orchestration
3D Secure was developed to help e-commerce merchants guard against fraud by authenticating cardholders at checkout. But merchants balance fraud losses, liability shifts, checkout completion, authorization approvals, customer experience, and repe...
2026 Prepaid Holiday Preview: Gift Cards Are Reliable Winners, Even in Uncertain Times
Holiday gift card sales can still deliver dependable growth, but success relies on knowing which buyers to prioritize and how they plan to spend. This report shows how economic signals, repeat buyer behavior, retail placement, and gift card desi...
Emerging Payments Survey 2026: Agent Adoption Surges, Biometric Authentication Grows
Consumer behavior regarding emerging payments is moving in different ways than conventional wisdom suggests. New Javelin research finds that biometric authentication has already reached mainstream use, but not everyday adoption, with availabilit...
Beyond The Card: Preparing for the A2A Economy
Account-to-account payments will grow in importance, but they are unlikely to displace cards as the dominant retail payment method in the U.S. because consumers remain attached to cards’ convenience, rewards, dispute protections, tokenization, a...
Small Business Credit Cards: A $1 Trillion Opportunity for Issuers, Networks, and Fintechs
Small business cards are entering a new era. Transaction volume is expected to exceed $1 trillion, and cards have become gateways to deeper banking, data, and cash-flow relationships. This report reveals the market shifts, disruptions, underwrit...
BIS Project Agorá: A Road Map to Tokenized Deposits for FIs
Project Agorá is more than a wholesale cross-border payments prototype. It signals that central banks, commercial banks, and financial infrastructure providers are preparing to absorb many of the features that made stablecoins attractive. It’s a...
Speed Matters in Gift Card Redemption: Snapshots from Javelin’s 2026 Prepaid Consumer Sentiment Survey
Why do some prepaid gift cards drive faster spending, stronger engagement, and more future purchases than others? This report shows how redemption speed shapes behaviors across gift recipients and self-users, uncovering where promotions, design,...
The Technology Product Owner: New Rules, New Roles at FIs
As banks decide to monetize data and deploy AI, a new kind of employee is becoming critical to turning technology into revenue. Product owners who blend finance, technology, and strategy are reshaping decision-making at financial institutions. T...