SECTION · PAYMENTS · CARDS — THE THIN MARGIN AT THE CENTRE OF EVERYTHING

Cards.

Cards still move the majority of global consumer spend and remain the most fought-over product in fintech. Our coverage follows Visa and Mastercard's pricing memos, the issuer-processor consolidation, the slow shift to virtual-card primary rails, and the agent-initiated transaction question that is about to reset authorisation economics.

009 STORIES PUBLISHED THIS QUARTER · UPDATED DAILY

Scoop GLOBAL · 9 MIN READ · 26 APR 2026

The card networks’ quiet pivot: how Visa and Mastercard plan to charge for AI agents that pay.

Two internal pricing memos seen by Fintechly suggest the schemes are preparing a separate, higher take-rate for transactions initiated by autonomous software agents — and a small group of large platforms have already been briefed.

BY MARCUS CHEN

Analysis LATAM · 7 MIN

Latin America is where the next billion contactless payments will happen — and Visa knows it.

BY HELENA MARQUES · 24 APR 2026

Analysis US · 11 MIN

Apple Pay’s second act: how Tap-to-Pay quietly became a small-business operating system.

BY RACHEL TAN · 21 APR 2026

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News EU · 6 MIN

Adyen opens an SDK for AI agents — and quietly raises take-rates.

The Dutch payments giant has shipped a developer toolkit that lets autonomous agents pay through its rails — with a per-transaction premium that nobody on the call quite wanted to discuss.

BY MARCUS CHEN · 23 APR 2026

Scoop US · 5 MIN

Stripe quietly opens Bridge stablecoin rails to its top 200 platforms.

Six months after the $1.1B acquisition, Stripe’s biggest customers can now settle in USDC at cost — a move that re-prices every cross-border B2B payment Stripe touches.

BY MARCUS CHEN · 22 APR 2026

News UK · 4 MIN

FCA finalises permanent open-banking framework — VRPs go mainstream in Q3.

After three years of consultations, the UK regulator has set the rules of the road for variable recurring payments. The retail rollout begins in July.

BY PRIYA ANAND · 20 APR 2026

Explainer LATAM · 8 MIN

Why every central bank in Latin America is now trying to copy Pix.

From Mexico’s CoDi to Colombia’s Bre-B, instant-payment rails modelled on Brazil’s success are arriving across the region. Some are working. Most are not. Here’s why.

BY HELENA MARQUES · 18 APR 2026

News ASIA · 6 MIN

South-East Asia’s QR rails are about to interoperate — and the banks are nervous.

Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines have agreed to a single QR standard for cross-border retail payments. The five-country rollout begins next month.

BY KENJI MORI · 16 APR 2026

Analysis EU · 10 MIN

The European merchant-acquiring margin is collapsing. Three charts that explain why.

Take-rates on European card volume have fallen by 28 per cent in five years. The acquirers that survive the next two will be the ones that have already become something else.

BY FELIX VANDENBERG · 14 APR 2026

WHAT FINTECHLY IS TRACKING

Five payments stories we're reporting next.

EU

How Adyen plans to price its agent-SDK in production.
US

Inside the Stripe x Bridge integration roadmap for 2026.
UK

Which UK banks are quietly building VRP-native checkouts.
ASIA

What the SE-Asia QR interop standard does to FX margins.

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