2025 payments retrospective: the reshaping forces of agentic AI, A2A, RTPs, and CBDCs

Estera Sava, Senior Editor at The Paypers, analyses the tech and developments that reshaped payments in 2025.

Seismic shift: this is the defining trait of the 2025 global payments industry, driven by the growing dominance of agentic AI, account-to-account (A2A) and real-time payments (RTPs), central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), tokenization, and the widespread adoption of ISO 20022 standards.

Regulatory advancements, such as the EU’s PSD3 directive, combined with increased customer expectations for instantaneous, secure, and inclusive transactions, created fertile ground for technological innovations and will propel payment volumes to an estimated USD 3.0 trillion by 2029.

This article discusses the most significant payment developments of 2025, highlighting how these trends interacted with regulatory support, customer behaviour, and technological maturity, generating unprecedented industry momentum.

2025 – a transformative year for payments

In 2025, the ecosystem matured into a more interconnected, intelligent, and resilient one, largely due to ISO 20022's richer data structures, which enable advanced analytics and compliance, as well as RTPs and A2A payments, which gained more ground globally. These are slowly establishing themselves as the de facto payment methods in certain areas, with regional powerhouses – such as Brazil's Pix, India's UPI, Europe's SEPA Inst, and the US’s FedNow – demonstrating varied paths to adoption.

Agentic AI emerged as the year's breakout technology, helping manage fraud prevention workflows and reduce losses globally through real-time decision-making and adaptive learning. The market for agentic AI in fraud detection and prevention alone is expected to reach USD 37.76 billion by 2029, at a CAGR of 48.7%. The trending tech has already started bleeding out into ecommerce and payments – according to a survey, 81% US consumers expect to shop with agentic AI, which is a shift that could drive over USD 1 trillion in spending, accounting for about 50% of online commerce.

CBDC pilots have also accelerated across the APAC and Europe, with tokenization unlocking programmable money for supply chains and DeFi.

Looking ahead, 2026 promises unified RTP interoperability through projects such as BIS initiatives, agentic AI integrations with super apps, and CBDC developments.

Agentic AI: the road towards autonomy

Agentic AI was the pinnacle of 2025's technological advancements, distinguishing itself from traditional AI and machine learning (ML) by incorporating advanced reasoning, long-term planning, multi-agent collaboration, and independent execution capabilities. These systems, often built on large language models (LLMs), can handle end-to-end payment lifecycles – from initiation and risk assessment to settlement and reconciliation – while continuously self-improving according to outcomes.

One of the technology's biggest impacts stems from its ability to process multimodal data streams (e.g., transaction histories, behavioural biometrics, geolocation signals, external market feeds, and even social sentiment) and cross-reference them to anticipate risk before it appears. In ecommerce, for example, agents can simulate thousands of fraud scenarios per second, dynamically adapting authorisation thresholds without interrupting legitimate flows. This contributes to improved operational efficiency while addressing increased customer expectations for ‘invisible’ security and payments.

When talking about consumer payments, agents integrate behavioural analytics with network-wide signals, aiming to help prevent account takeovers (ATOs) and other types of fraud. For B2B RTPs, for instance, agents profile counterparties in milliseconds, flagging synthetic identities or laundering vectors by correlating payment graphs with corporate registries.

From a regulatory perspective, in Europe, the AI Act introduced clear requirements for high-risk AI systems and general purpose AI (GPAI), including governance, transparency, and audit obligations, which aim to help build trust and standardise compliance. In the US, the CFPB issued guidelines mandating AI explainability following Trump's deregulation push – nonetheless, the commitment to adopt AI technologies in a responsible, transparent, and tailored manner is likely to remain a common focus across both regions.

Visa and Mastercard's agentic protocols

Visa and Mastercard embedded agentic capabilities into their core infrastructures. Visa's agentic commerce plans seek to enable third-party AI agents to initiate and settle payments autonomously. In October, Visa introduced the Trusted Agent Protocol, an open framework built on existing web infrastructure that enables safe, agent-driven checkout by helping merchants differentiate malicious bots from legitimate AI agents acting on behalf of consumers. Pilot initiatives through several partnerships have already enabled multiple agent-initiated transactions, proving AI-driven purchasing is viable in live production environments.

Mastercard launched its Agent Pay service, layered on tokenized credentials, making tokens usable and controllable by registered AI agents. Moreover, the company advanced its fraud detection stack with GenAI-enhanced models, introduced the Agent Pay Acceptance Framework, and supported threat-intelligence capabilities through recent acquisitions and partnerships.

Regional case studies showcasing the momentum

• The US: JP Morgan and Bank of America deployed agentic AI for multiple applications. JP Morgan focused on several aspects, improving overall operations and productivity, while Bank of America AI agent’s focus is on payments.
• Europe: Barclays and HSBC started to leverage agentic for operational efficiency and fraud prevention.​
• APAC: DBS Bank utilises agentic AI for several use cases: customer service workflow improvements and fraud prevention.​

These examples showcase how regulatory clarity, customer demand for security, and technological maturity consolidated and changed the perspective on agentic AI in 2025.

A2A and real-time payments – slowly becoming the norm?

A2A payments solidified their position as disrupters in 2025, leveraging Open Banking APIs to facilitate direct transfers between bank accounts and providing instant confirmation and full traceability.

The model thrives on regulatory mandates for API interoperability, which helped unlock embedded payments for ecommerce, subscriptions, and remittances, while addressing consumer preferences for sustainable options (traditional cards' plastic production and data centre energy use drew scrutiny amid global decarbonisation goals). Past projections indicated that by year-end, A2A would capture 28% of global non-cash volume, particularly in emerging markets, where the payment method transformed financial inclusion.​

A2A payments’ momentum builds on customer behaviours, who prefer A2A for peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers due to speed and familiarity. Moreover, businesses value richer data payloads for automated reconciliation under ISO 20022, and tech enablers like event-driven APIs and cloud-native ledgers ensure high success rates, even in offline scenarios, via progressive web apps.

While regulatory initiatives varied by region, they consistently prioritised competition: Europe's PSD3 proposals expanded A2A to non-banks, and EPI and EuroPA initiatives furthered Europe’s approach, India's NPCI enforced data localisation for UPI, and Brazil's Central Bank mandated Pix universality, contributing to explosive growth.​

Country-specific adoption insights

• India's UPI became the epitome of A2A maturity, exceeding 18 billion monthly transactions in Q4 2025 (over 80% of all digital payments), with NPCI's International corridors linking to more countries in 2025 for remittances (including QR-based merchant payments and credit-on-UPI for underserved SMEs).
• Brazil's Pix system processed record transactions quarterly, while evolving into a cross-border powerhouse.
• In the UK, Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs), an Open Banking tech enabling users to authorise trusted third parties to manage recurring transactions, now account for 16% of Open Banking payments. Moreover, 31 companies partnered to establish the UK Payments Initiative (UKPI) and help expand VRPs into new use cases, like utility payments, financial services payments, and payments to local and central government.
• Australia's New Payments Platform (NPP) reached 1.8 billion transactions, integrating A2A payments into super apps and BNPL services.
• Nigeria's NIBSS Instant Payments became the first African mature A2A payment service, further exemplifying A2A's inclusion potential.​

These developments reveal a pattern: where regulators enforce open access and tech providers build resilient rails, A2A goes past speed and affordability expectations, reshaping payments globally.

Real-time payments and ISO 20022: instant everything

Real-time payments (RTPs) became ubiquitous in 2025, with over 80 live schemes across jurisdictions, thanks to ISO 20022’s structured, data-rich messaging, which supported advanced use cases. The standard contributed to RTPs’ evolution from P2P services into enterprise-grade rails for treasury management, payroll, and IoT micropayments. Customer adoption hinges on 24/7 availability and the uptime guarantees, enabled by hybrid cloud architectures and AI-driven resilience.​

Moreover, regulatory harmonisation, such as G20 roadmap milestones, coupled with technological innovation, helped address legacy batch system limitations and fuelled the momentum toward universal adoption. Europe's PSD3 marks a regulatory turning point, and in November, a provisional agreement was reached on a new PSR and PSD3, detailing the next steps for implementation.

Programmable money: CBDCs and tokenization

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) switched from being proofs-of-concept to scaled pilots in 2025, with over 140 countries involved. Retail CBDCs prioritised user privacy through zero-knowledge proofs and offline wallets, while wholesale variants tokenized securities for collateral management, cutting operational costs.

Regions with live and pilot CBDCs

• China's e-CNY reached multiple user wallets, tokenizing supply chain payments, with offline QR capabilities enabling efficiency gains in rural areas.
• India's digital rupee onboarded unbanked customers via offline pilots linked to UPI.  
• The Eurozone's digital euro pilots were backed for both online and offline functionalities.
• Switzerland's Project Helvetia extended its wholesale CBDC pilots until mid-2027 and expanded the proposal to include the settlement of tokenized assets with traditional central bank money (RTGS link).

Customers’ needs for stable, borderless value transfer, backed by central bank credibility, drove the pilots, while tokenization mitigated volatility risks.

Looking ahead, in 2026-2027, BIS RTP bridges will likely unify over 100 schemes, and mobile A2A payments will further support an increase in financial inclusion in Africa and LATAM. Quantum-resistant cryptography and sustainable, ‘green payment’ standards will counter risks, transforming payments into autonomous, inclusive infrastructures.

The space is ripe with possibilities.

Final thoughts

The global payments industry in 2025 is defined by a seismic shift driven by the convergence of agentic AI, account-to-account and real-time payments, central bank digital currencies, tokenization, and the widespread adoption of ISO 20022 standards. As analysed above, the interaction between regulation, customer behaviour, and technological maturity has generated unprecedented momentum, reshaping the payments landscape and setting a clear trajectory for a continued evolution.

About the author

Estera Sava is a Senior Editor at The Paypers, bringing her expertise in content creation and editorial processes to the Payments & Commerce team. With a focus on the ever-evolving ecommerce payments landscape, she is actively involved in various high-impact projects and industry reports. Through her proactive approach and dedication, Estera helps drive the success of The Paypers' initiatives.