2026 Forecast: Big Ideas and Bold Innovations Ahead

January 28, 2026

By Velera

The banking and payments landscape in 2026 will likely be shaped by transformative innovations and driven by changing consumer preferences, advancements in technology and regulatory developments. We discussed some of these ideas in our 2025 and Beyond predictions, and here we expand upon many of those, as well as add some new notions as our market develops toward an inclusive, open finance ecosystem, supported by technology advancements that will drive innovation, personalization and growth.

Frictionless Tech the Default for Making and Protecting Payments

In today’s world, where time can feel like a luxury — convenience is king. The “tap and go” payment experience will continue to become more mainstream and the default from both consumer and merchant acceptance. As reported in the 2025 Eye on Payments research study, contactless card adoption is strong. Eighty percent of credit union members had a contactless card in 2025, up from 58% in 2021. Nearly two-thirds of consumers (63%) report they prefer to pay in-store with a contactless card, digital wallet or wearable. Digital wallets with NFC payments capabilities are becoming the standard payment option for younger demographics and that popularity is spreading rapidly to older generations.

Eight in ten Gen Z (83%), Younger Millennials (83%) and Older Millennials (77%) report using a mobile wallet at least a few times per month. While most Baby Boomers prefer physical cards, nearly 39% now use a mobile wallet — up significantly from just 25% in 2024. Contactless cards will be interactive with mobile phones ,and we will start to see backend processes using AI flows to enable new experiences.

Not only do consumers want convenient and frictionless ways to pay, they also want secure and easy ways to access their accounts or make payments. Biometric authentication continues to grow in popularity, as we mentioned in last year’s predictions. Biometric Digital Identity, an electronic, phone-based version of your physical ID (like a driver’s license) that uses your unique biological traits (fingerprint, face, iris) and Out-of-Band (OOB) Verifications with Biometrics, which combines a primary login (like a password) with a second verification step (like a fingerprint or face scan) on a separate device or channel (usually your phone), as well as OOB text-based verifications, will begin to replace User ID passwords, client secret (app-specific password) models and card and PIN models. This switch is already starting to happen in international markets, but it will likely filter to the U.S. ATM market by the end of 2026. U.S. financial institutions will start to see more usage of these tools specifically for opening new accounts, making payments and accessing digital and mobile banking apps.

Regulatory and compliance rules will need to evolve accordingly and will be the catalyst to move this trend forward. Credit unions will also need to be prepared to provide education to their members on how to use these new security measures that help remove friction from the log-in process. – Chris Barry, Manager, Innovation

Rise of Digital Assets

As digital‑asset momentum resurfaces, credit unions are feeling renewed pressure to respond — but thoughtful strategy, not urgency, is what’s truly needed. This blog outlines the current regulatory landscape, the true state of demand and the strategic considerations credit unions should evaluate as they explore digital assets.

As digital asset momentum resurfaces, credit unions are feeling renewed pressure to respond. It can be overwhelming to understand what’s real, what’s a risk, what’s an opportunity and what’s just industry hype when it comes to digital assets. For example:

•    What does the GENIUS Act actually require us to understand?
•    Are stablecoins or tokens more impactful in practice?
•    Should we worry about deposit displacement from fintechs?
•    Can tokenized settlement reduce operating costs?
•    If remittance shifts to stablecoins, what role can CUs play?
•    What would it take to safely accept tokenized or stablecoin payments?
•    What use cases deserve priority?

It’s critical to approach this not on an individual credit-union-by-credit-union basis, but on the scale of the entire cooperative system. How might the digital asset infrastructure strengthen the credit union movement as a whole? How do we leverage $2 trillion in combined assets to compete with any major bank in the country? Could digital asset rails help us acquire new members, rethink lending, lower settlement costs, expand global money movement options or solve problems we haven’t fully defined yet? If so, then the smartest path forward is to explore leveraging them deliberately — and collectively.

Velera created the Digital Asset Lab (DAL), in which our team of experts explores the burning questions about digital assets — and shares what we discover. Read this blog about navigating the rise of digital assets that came out of the Digital Asset Lab and stay tuned for more to come. – Nathan Meyer, Senior Innovation Strategist

Growing Impact of Agentic AI

Consumers are eager for tools that simplify life and save money — and that eagerness is what will drive agentic AI commerce forward. Users are already self-serving their agentic AI needs in finance, asking ChatGPT to be a personal rate-finder, budgeting coach or investment researcher. People now expect AI to handle the comparison and present the best option in seconds. That trust is also expanding; soon, the AI agent won’t stop at finding the deal, it will extend to making the purchase on their behalf. According to data from Chain Store Age and reported by PYMNTS, 45% of consumers would be comfortable letting AI agents complete purchases on their behalf — and among Gen Z, that rises to a majority at 54%. ChatGPT itself proved this appetite, hitting one million users in just five days — faster than Instagram or TikTok. Today, even with 96% of internet users aware of AI’s tendency to hallucinate — and 86% having personally experienced it — the tool still commands 800 million active users and over two billion daily queries.

In 2025, we saw the rollout of open protocols from industry leaders like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Perplexity and Stripe. EMVCo announced work on global specifications, PayPal launched its Agent toolkit, Mastercard introduced Agent Pay and Visa rolled out Intelligent Commerce on AWS — all of which are systems designed to power agentic AI transactions. In 2026, agentic AI will continue to take shape in eCommerce, with those same major industry players tackling challenges around fraud, chargebacks, liability, regulatory foresight and, especially, privacy rules. Once those foundations are in place, mass adoption won’t be far behind. – Angelina Renaldo, Senior Innovation Strategist

Agentic AI operations will become the default operating model. Financial institutions will begin shifting from “AI assistance” to back-office agentic AI workflows across fraud ops, reconciliation, exception handling, member support and marketing. As these workflows mature, financial institutions will see measurable reductions in cycle time, error rates and service cost, driven by autonomous agents handling high volume, rules-based tasks. This shift marks the beginning of an operational model where humans supervise, audit and guide AI-driven processes rather than executing them manually.

AI governance will evolve into “workflow governance.” Financial institutions will move beyond AI governance to full workflow governance, assessing risk, explainability and control at the level of agentic systems and processes. This requires new oversight mechanisms that track decision logic, agent autonomy and workflow outcomes. As a result, governance will become a cross-functional discipline integrated into product, operations, risk and compliance practices. – Elizabeth Wadsworth, VP, Decision Intelligence & Transformation

Open Banking Stays Industry-Led

CNBC reported that JPMorgan Chase has secured agreements ensuring it gets paid by fintech firms behind nearly all the data requests flowing through third-party apps connected to customer bank accounts. Allowing financial institutions to charge data recipients for access could help offset the significant upfront and ongoing costs of maintaining the infrastructure and governance required for a safe and sound open banking framework. However, the broader implications remain unclear. If large financial institutions set the price of access, how will smaller banks and credit unions fare when enabling use cases such as personal financial management, cash flow underwriting or account opening? Will the cost of access create barriers for the long tail of the industry, potentially limiting innovation and consumer choice? If the revised rule doesn’t allow data providers to charge for access, it will remain tied up in court.

Either way, open banking will stay industry-led, driven by market demand as consumers increasingly share their data to better manage their financial lives. A key example is securing improved loan terms by sharing their checking account transaction data. Credit scores often fail to capture a consumer’s true intent or ability to repay — Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) activity isn’t reflected, and some credit-building products even undermine the legitimacy of the reports themselves. In 2026, we’ll see lenders adopt cash flow underwriting more widely, approving more loans while mitigating risk for the 106 million Americans who currently lack access to mainstream credit. Cash flow data won’t stop at initial credit extension; it will expand into limit management and delinquency prevention, reshaping how lenders assess and support borrowers. – Angelina Renaldo, Senior Innovation Strategist

Data Becomes the New Member Experience Moat

Data will be the proactive advantage, or “moat,” that keeps top-performing credit unions ahead of competitors. Just like a moat protects a castle, a strong data ecosystem is difficult to replicate with the same level of personalization and proactive service — thereby protecting a credit union’s market position. Top performing credit unions will differentiate not by products, but by robust data ecosystems that power personalization, micro-segment lending, financial wellness automation and next-best-action decisioning. Unified, high-fidelity data architectures can anticipate needs and deliver proactive guidance to your members rather than reactive service. This data advantage directly translates into higher engagement, retention and wallet share as members come to expect tailored financial experiences from their credit union.

Decision Intelligence Becomes a Core Organizational Competency

Decision Intelligence (DI) will become a foundation for product, risk, operations and finance teams. Traditionally, DI is a specialist discipline that examines, understands and engineers how decisions are made to improve decision-making. Organizations, including financial institutions, that adopt unified DI frameworks will be able to standardize how human and AI decisions are made. Teams will begin designing processes around decision quality, transparency and repeatability, reducing variance in outcomes across the organization. This competency will become a foundational requirement for safely scaling AI and achieving consistent strategic impact. For credit unions, this will show up in practical ways — such as using process intelligence and digital twins of member journeys (e.g. loan origination or dispute resolution) to simulate decisions before they’re deployed. This improves consistency across channels and ensures AI-assisted decisions align with member impact, risk tolerance and regulatory expectations.

Quantum Readiness Becomes a Strategic Priority for Financial Infrastructure

As we mentioned in a prediction from 2024, quantum computing is an up and coming multidisciplinary field that leverages aspects of computer science, physics and mathematics to utilize quantum mechanics in order to solve complex problems faster than classical computers. While still years away from being functional, the development pace of quantum computing is rapidly accelerating. Financial institutions need to start reassessing their long-term security plans because the cryptographic systems used to secure data and transactions are based on math problems that quantum computers will eventually solve much faster than classical computers, making them vulnerable.

While practical quantum attacks remain years away, factors are making becoming “quantum ready” something that financial institutions need to start planning for now. “Store now, decrypt later” threats are a strategy where attackers steal encrypted data today, storing it until quantum computers are able to break the encryption. The federal government is releasing Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) mandates, compelling agencies and organizations to identify systems vulnerable to quantum attacks and prepare a migration plan to safer systems. There are also rapid advancements in qubits, which are what allow quantum processors to do their work — analogous to bits in classical computers — meaning that we are drawing even closer to moving from quantum computing being largely theoretical to having practical, large-scale applications. Quantum-safe migration needs to become a strategic initiative to start tackling now, rather than in the distant future.

Additionally, blockchain ecosystems face heightened scrutiny, as many rely on cryptographic primitives — fundamental, well-established, low-level algorithms — which are vulnerable to quantum attacks. This is prompting the reassessment of where distributed digital asset ledgers fit in long-term architecture planning. Financial institutions should begin incorporating quantum-risk scenarios into their annual technology roadmaps, treating cryptographic agility — the ability to quickly switch to quantum-safe encryption — as a key modernization requirement. – Elizabeth Wadsworth, VP, Decision Intelligence & Transformation

To learn more about Velera and the solutions they offer, connect with the GoWest Solutions Team today!

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