Tommaso Jacopo Ulissi, Head of Strategy and Transformation, Nexi Group
Over the last decade, cash has faded, contactless has surged, and mobile wallets have gone mainstream. Relentless digitalization has changed everyday payments beyond recognition, yet the checkout has remained largely static: familiar, trusted and functional; yet slow, uninspiring and impersonal.
But the checkout is changing. New technologies, shifting consumer demands, and an ever-evolving political and economic landscape means 2026 will be a year of personalization, protection and partnership, transforming the checkout experience for merchants and consumers alike.
First: Software-based payments will take center stage
Software-based payments will redefine the payment offer in 2026, accelerating access to a range of payment options so that anyone who needs to deliver a payment function will be able to do so. The innovations driving this are ISV partnerships and mobile payment acceptance (SoftPOS).
Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are increasingly forming partnerships with payment providers. By integrating payments directly into ecosystems, designed around merchant use cases rather than payments, digital onboarding becomes much easier, helping more merchants start and grow their businesses. A merchant using Shopify or Adobe Commerce, for example, will be able to access ‘plug and play’ payments, integrated within wider business software, enabling consistency across channels, with no discrepancies in pricing, discounts, or loyalty rewards.
Mobile payment acceptance is not new, but is set for dramatic growth in 2026. Some pioneering merchants have already begun using personal smartphones as trusted payment acceptance terminals. The benefits are clear: a device they already own can reliably and securely accept contactless and QR code-based payments.
For consumers, this “SoftPOS” solution offers highly-secured payment acceptance, enabling them to make purchases at their own convenience, whether that’s in their house, in the market or in a shop – anywhere! For merchants, it’s ultra-accessible, easy to set up and operate, and relatively low cost compared to traditional POS hardware.
In 2026, this will lead to new shopping behaviours: it will untether staff from the checkout desk, enabling them to be redeployed throughout the store to engage with shoppers, offer personalized shopping experiences and create additional upsell opportunities. Say goodbye to long lines waiting for a free cashier at the checkout desk.
Second: Integrated payments will tailor by vertical and personalize per customer
In 2026, a fresh fusion of personalized payments and verticalized software will mark a major leap forward in how merchants differentiate themselves, ensuring their customers feel recognized and valued with each transaction.
By tailoring the checkout to the environment in which it is being used, instead of adopting a one-size-fits all approach, merchants in 2026 can differentiate themselves more distinctly than ever before, offering an experience that adds mutual value to the business and its customers. One industry primed for a personalization transformation in 2026 is hospitality.
Hospitality is highly specialized, with a dynamic ecosystem of enabling platforms. Guests expect everything to be fast, easy, and personal. Merchants, meanwhile, are increasingly seeking a unified combination of innovative hardware and agile software to deliver a streamlined “one-stop-shop” experience and exceptional customer service.
Integrated payments across the entire hospitality stack can tie guest profiles to a personalized customer offer, supported by seamless payments at every touchpoint. So, in 2026, whether you are checking in, booking a spa treatment, or ordering dinner at the restaurant, you can pay without friction and without interruption, creating the ultimate guest experience.
Restaurants themselves are a unique use case for payments: you pay after consuming the goods, the bill may be split, and you may choose to tip the staff with something extra, for example. One supporting technology expected to grow in 2026 is designed to support such varied needs and behaviours, not just on behalf of paying customers, but for business operations too.
SmartPOS is one example of a unified commerce solution that transforms the checkout from a simple payment-acceptance station into a comprehensive business operations hub. Businesses using the technology in 2026 can enhance their operational efficiency, enabling staff to manage fragmented business operations services, such as bookings or inventory management, all from a single terminal.
The same SmartPOS terminal, keeping with our restaurant example, can not only offer payment options tailored to the customer’s preference, but it can also: recognize returning customers and automatically apply loyalty benefits; recall previous orders to make tailored menu suggestions; and enable staff to personalize interactions at the table, based on a guest’s dining history.
Finally, 2026 will mark the beginning of a new trend that could completely transform how we shop online: agentic commerce. Agentic commerce offers every consumer access to their own personal, highly intelligent shopping assistant. No longer will we spend time and effort browsing countless websites trying to find the right product, in the right size, for the right price, with the right delivery option. The AI agent will do the heavy lifting for us, providing options to approve, based on our criteria. All we will do as a shopper is select our preferred option and authorize the AI agent to buy it on our behalf, using secure, tokenized card details.
We have seen the first bold steps towards this in 2025: OpenAI launched “Buy it in ChatGPT”, enabling users in the U.S. to make single-item purchases with select retailers. The Generative AI giant also announced that PayPal wallets will be integrated within its Instant Checkout offer from 2026.
Every week there is more movement in this space and at Nexi, we’re pleased to be involved in the development of Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), which enables users to initiate and transact secure, agent-led payments through mandates and verifiable credentials. As such technology matures and users gain trust and familiarity with agentic commerce, we expect the traditional checkout – where the user browses a site and adds items to a basket – to be turned on its head.
Third: The battle for sovereignty and resilience will intensify
These transformations will count for little though, if the underlying payment infrastructure is neither sovereign nor resilient. As we move into 2026, the pressures on Europe’s payment rails are mounting on several fronts.
Payments today have become part of critical national infrastructure. If a payment system goes down, even for just a few hours, it can cause significant economic and societal harm. Rising geopolitical tensions mean such operational resilience is constantly being tested, with growing threats to undersea cables and targeted attacks on the European payment ecosystem.
In 2026, expect renewed focus on robust, fallback solutions like offline payments from terminals that can encrypt and locally store transaction data at the POS, syncing when connectivity resumes.Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Estonia are already developing offline payment capabilities based on deferred authorization. Expect more countries to follow suit in the next twelve months.
Efforts are also ongoing to establish an independent payment ecosystem in Europe, free from dependence on foreign-owned networks that leave the continent vulnerable to political interference, as well as ever-rising transaction fees. As the European payment champion, Nexi is closely involved in two initiatives that will help deliver sovereign, resilient payments.
A key feature of the digital euro is to ensure a similar level of privacy and resilience to cash. This requires an ability to pay offline, with no third-party involvement. The European Central Bank (ECB) has selected a cooperation between Giesecke+Devrient, Nexi and Capgemini to deliver this capability, to make offline digital euro payments available to users and merchants. This work will take place through 2026 as part of the critical groundwork needed to develop a trusted digital currency for Europe.
These moves will help reduce Europe’s over-reliance on international card schemes and the high fees that result from such dependent relationships. Supporting this is Wero, built by the European Payments Initiative (EPI) with involvement from Nexi and other payment stakeholders to deliver instant payments. In 2026, Wero will be developed further to cover online checkout and person-to-person (P2P) payments, similar to services like Swish and Venmo.
Consumers will encounter truly distinct points of sale in 2026, depending on their location, preferences, profile and the type of business they are buying from. We believe the year ahead can be transformational for those intent on advancing the customer experience at both the checkout and in their back-office systems. Progress will belong to those ready to collaborate – even with rivals – to bring consistency to the checkout, and who remain unwavering in their obligation to shield users from emerging threats.
