Another year in the books. And while you’re hopefully enjoying the holidays with family and friends, the payments industry doesn’t take any days off.
Here’s my roundup of the biggest payment news stories from December:
Global Payments Rate Increase
Global Payments announced that they’re increasing merchant rates by 0.20% per transaction for the new year (effective 1/1/26).
So if you’re using Global to process payments and you made it all of 2025 without a rate hike, you’re likely impacted by this increase.
New TSYS Annual Fee
Businesses using TSYS merchant services can expect a $499 annual fee on their December 2025 statements (sent in January 2026).
While December is typically annual fee season for most processors, this is one of the highest rates we’ve seen across the industry.
Merchants Struggle With Visa’s New CEDP Qualifications
This story really caught my attention because it’s something I’ve been covering all year at different stages.
Visa initially rolled out its new Commercial Enhanced Data Program back in April, but gave merchants until October to officially comply with new standards for access to discounted rates.
But according to Payments Drive, merchants that previously qualified for reduced rates are now being hit with higher interchange fees.
There’s no hard data behind this yet since the program is still so new. Though it seems the problem is largely due to the fact that merchants have been able to submit fake data for years to achieve Level 3 rates. This is no longer possible under Visa’s new CEDP rules. So if you’re submitting bad data and you’re not a “qualified” merchant in the eyes of Visa, then your interchange rates will be higher than they were in the past.
Mastercard Expands Digital Wallet Capabilities
Mastercard announced a new partnership with TerraPay to help improve digital wallet capabilities worldwide.
The collaboration is going to help TerraPay’s wallet partners (like fintechs, banks, mobile wallets) provide 150+ million seamless transaction locations where Mastercard is accepted across the globe.
Walmart Weighs in on the Visa/Mastercard Settlement
Walmart is leading a group of retailers saying that the newest version of Visa and Mastercard’s merchant settlement from last month isn’t going to make an impact for merchants.
A major part of Walmart’s pushback against the settlement is tied to the proposed abolition of the “honor all cards” rules, meaning that merchants could choose to accept certain types of Visas but not others in an attempt to lower interchange fees.
This is exactly what I said about the Visa/Mastercard settlement when I saw the new proposal. It’s one of several major flaws that I poked holes in, and it’s refreshing to see that other industry giants are in agreement (as this was something that nobody seemed to be talking about early on).
FIS Agrees to $210 Million Legal Settlement Over Worldpay Acquisition
On December 17th, FIS agreed to settle a $210 million lawsuit with investors.
The settlement stems from when FIS bought Worldpay for $35 billion back in 2019. Shareholders have alleged that FIS executives omitted information or made misleading/false statements about the purchase which artificially inflated shares.
FIS is not admitting to any wrongdoing. And separately, Worldpay is set to change hands again in 2026 as it’s being acquired by Global Payments.
PNC Joins FedNow
PNC Bank has finally joined FedNow, giving them access to the Federal Reserve’s instant payment system.
This comes over two years after the government-backed real-time payment option was made available to banks.
Agentic Commerce is Trending Up
This month I’ve seen more headlines related to “agentic commerce” and “agentic storefronts” than probably the entire year combined.
Agentic commerce is a fancy name for using AI agents for shopping online. Whether it’s finding items, comparing prices, and completing purchases, this is designed to help save people time and money when shopping online and providing hyper-personalized experiences.
Here are some of the biggest names working on these features:
- Fiserv is working with Visa on agentic commerce tools.
- Shopify launched agentic storefronts for ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Copilot.
- Target has an app directly within ChatGPT that allows customers to search and buy items using their Target account.
- Amazon is working with Visa to help developers and businesses connect agentic commerce with secure and reliable transactions.
This is something that I think we’ll continue to see even more of in 2026. And it will likely be a major part of my 2026 payment trends that I’ll likely cover early next month.
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