2025 Commercial Payments Year in Review

The 2025 Commercial Payments Year in Review report catalogs the commercial payments stories that dominated industry attention across the year. It covers the evolving stablecoin landscape and the growing presence therein of established payment players, alongside the regulatory push to clarify how private stablecoins should be governed and trusted for payment use cases. It also examines the emergence of agentic AI in payments, the implications of AI-initiated transactions for network rules and commercial controls, the expanding enterprise use cases for real-time payments, and the continued spread of embedded payments and embedded working capital inside enterprise resource planning and vertical software-as-a-service environments. It also looks at the effects of tariff regimes in flux. 

A consolidated view of key developments in 2025 will assist planning across product design, infrastructure investment, partnership strategy, and risk management. The report also looks at major developments that may shape competitive dynamics beyond the core themes, including the Visa and Mastercard swipe-fee settlement, major processing mergers and acquisitions, early tokenized deposit pilots by large banks, and U.S. progress on ISO 20022 modernization. 

Key questions discussed in this report:

• What were the biggest headlines and market drivers in commercial payments in 2025?
• What excited the market most about stablecoins in 2025, and what concerns should be weighed alongside that excitement?
• What concrete 2025 milestones signaled that real-time payments were gaining enterprise footing? How did embedded finance expand in 2025?

Companies Mentioned:

ACI, Amex (mentioned indirectly as American Express), B4B Payments, Bank of America, BMO, BNY Mellon, Block, Citi, Coupa, Escalent, FIS, Fiserv, Global Payments, Highnote, HSBC, JPMorgan, Mastercard, PayPal, Stripe, Tether, Visa, Worldpay