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Against this backdrop, the payments industry remains the most valuable part of financial services, generating $2.5 trillion in revenue from $2.0 quadrillion in value flows, supported by 3.6 trillion transactions worldwide.

From: The 2025 Global Payments Report | McKinsey.

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“We know there’s a percentage [of customers] that want to pay directly with a bank account,” Joshua Karoly, director of payments product at Netflix, said during another session. Why that is may be personal preference, debt concerns with credit cards, or other issues, he says.

From his perspective, Karoly is not looking at pay by bank to cannibalize credit or debit card transactions. “I’m really looking to for this population that wants to pay with a bank account to enable them to pay with a bank account,” Karoly said.

From: Walmart’s Pay by Bank Project Remains on Track for 2025 – Digital Transactions.

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This project demonstrated that while it might be technically feasible to implement an offline payment functionality for a digital pound, there are trade-offs, particularly around user experience and preventing double spending and counterfeiting, that make implementing it challenging.
It showed that there are several technology choices that could be made for offline payments today, but those are dependent on policy choices, such as risk appetite, product proposition and liability, which impact the options available for mitigating security risks. No final decision has been made on whether an offline payment functionality would be implemented for a digital pound.

From: Digital pound experiment report: Offline payments | Bank of England.

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Rather than typing in a password, customers will instead be able to access their ANZ Plus Web Banking through two authentication methods: either by using a passkey, which could be their fingerprint, face or mobile device PIN, or by entering their mobile number and approving a log-in request sent to their secure ANZ Plus app.

From: ANZ scraps passwords for digital banking log-in.

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Key insight: QR codes streamline payments and onboarding while creating novel phishing attack surfaces.
What’s at stake: Fraud losses, identity theft and operational disruptions from undetected QR exploits.
Forward look: Prepare for industry-wide QR standards, signed codes and stronger MFA requirements.
Overview bullets generated by AI with editorial review

From: The promise and perils of QR codes in banking | American Banker.

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Agents will need permission to access apps, APIs and websites if they are ever going to call an Uber or book a flight, the kind of expectation that has been established over the past year.

Humans type passwords or use facial and fingerprint recognition to sign into their accounts, but AI agents require new methods of authorization to address the intermediary role between humans and the services they want to use

From: AI Agents Face One Last, Big Obstacle – WSJ.

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Just add a single line of code in your app, and you can require a USDC payment for each incoming request.

paymentMiddleware(“0xYourAddress”, {“/your-endpoint”: “$0.01”});
// and thats it!
If a request arrives without payment, the server responds with HTTP 402, prompting the client to pay and retry.

HTTP/1.1 402 Payment Required
x402 allows any web developer to accept crypto payments without the complexity of having to interact with the blockchain.

From: x402.org.

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x402 solves this by resurrecting the HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status code, a dormant feature of the web designed for seamless payment requests within standard HTTP interactions. Now, clients—whether humans, scripts, or AI agents—can respond to payment prompts instantly using widely-used stablecoins (like USDC), making transactions as effortless as loading a webpage.
Specifically, x402 enables:
Servers to instantly issue standardized 402 Payment Required responses for premium digital resources.
Embedded, automatic payment instructions directly within standard HTTP responses.
Seamless integration into existing HTTP infrastructure, eliminating the need for special wallet interfaces, layers, or separate authentication mechanisms.
The practical impact is clear: payments become instant, seamless, and embedded directly into the internet—unlocking new business models, frictionless global transactions, and fully autonomous software interactions.

From: Introducing x402: a new standard for internet-native payments | Coinbase.

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The recent rapid acceleration of generative AI and the imminent prospect of more ubiquitous agentic AI systems—artificial intelligence software capable of autonomously performing complex tasks, making decisions, and interacting convincingly—has renewed interest in digital identity writ large. Agentic AI is projected to become more prevalent in the immediate future, as human users proactively delegate tasks to credentialed agents.

From: Lessons from National Digital ID Systems for Privacy, Security, and Trust in the AI Age | TechPolicy.Press.

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We expect digital pound intermediaries to function within a structured ecosystem, with defined obligations, roles and relationships and with a clear framework of their rights, rules and responsibilities. They will provide the user-facing services that allow individuals and businesses to access and use digital pounds, while the Bank will maintain the core ledger.

PIPs will provide the primary access to digital pound services for users. This will include providing wallet services, initiating payments and managing user interactions with the digital pound. PIPs would integrate with the core ledger via application programming interfaces (APIs).

ESIPs will provide value-added services such as payment initiation and financial data tools. ESIPs are unlikely to require integration with the core ledger, instead working with PIPs to facilitate connections with users’ digital pound accounts. However, we are open to reconsidering this in light of evidence of potential user-facing services that would benefit from access to the core ledger.

The Bank will build and operate the core infrastructure, maintaining ledger integrity, and processing and settling payments made between users. This structured approach allows for competition and innovation while ensuring consistency and security.

From: Design note – Intermediary roles and scheme rulebook | Bank of England.

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