What price Modernisation? A round-up of 2026 predictions.  

At Eris Intelligence, we’ve analysed predictions from a wide range of industry sources to give readers an overview of what experts think is going to happen next year. Our analysis reveals an industry keen to present a picture of innovation and modernisation: that said, unspoken challenges also emerge from our analysis of the top trends – and these challenges are not insignificant.

Stablecoin settlement, Agentic commerce, and embedded payments

One theme dominated above all others: the steady march toward blockchain-based infrastructure, particularly stablecoin settlement rails. Nine separate organisations predicted stablecoins would become more prevalent, with agentic commerce and AI-driven transactions, close behind at eight mentions, followed by three votes for invisible or embedded payments, three for rising consumer expectations of seamless digital experiences, and two predicting that digital ID will reshape payment approvals. The same handful of ideas surfaced again and again, revealing an interesting theme.

What’s really out there?

The repetitions reveal a gap between the language of innovation and the reality of where investment and attention are actually going. Based on what experts are predicting for the new year, payments firms are  focusing on  a narrow set of infrastructure upgrades, faster settlement, deeper automation, and less visible friction, each marketed as transformational.

“In 2026, payments will focus on a narrow set of infrastructure upgrades, faster settlement, deeper automation and lower user friction.”

This illuminates a dominant narrative: payments are finally catching up with the realities of a real-time digital economy. But look more closely and a fragile picture emerges. These trends are not independent. Stablecoin rails only work at scale with robust digital identity and automated compliance. Agentic commerce faces similar hurdles. Invisible payments improve user experience precisely by removing human authorisation steps that once acted as informal safeguards. Progress is measured in milliseconds saved and friction removed rather than in resilience gained. Yet many of the frictions now being engineered away serve a purpose: delay, review, human judgement, and regulatory pause.

Some customers are alert to the increased fragility of digital finance. Usage of physical cash has risen in several markets over the past five years. This isn’t nostalgia or resistance to technology. It’s a rational response to systems that feel faster but are less transparent, and a nod to the continued importance of offline resilience.

ERIS SAYS: There are no settled solutions yet, but we can expect a struggle over who controls the new authorisation and identity layer of finance. Governments frame it as sovereignty. Banks see a last defensible moat. Tech giants view it as the gateway to ecosystem dominance and agent-led commerce. Together they produce a system that is more interdependent and less legible.

This is the uncomfortable subtext missing from most 2026 predictions. As an industry, we speak as if modernisation is inevitable and unambiguously positive, but the evidence suggests something different: transactions are becoming faster at a more rapid rate than we are able to govern and manage them. The challenge for the new year will be to find a balance between rapid innovation and building a resilient foundation which  can sustain the current pace of change and not risk yet more fraud.