Key takeaways from MPE 2026

Diana Vorniceanu, Senior Editor at The Paypers, discusses the key takeaways from MPE Berlin 2026.

In March, The Paypers had the pleasure of attending MPE 2026. Throughout three sunny days in Berlin, we got to sit down with industry stakeholders, network, attend panel discussions, and watch numerous keynotes. In this article we distil all the information we took home from the event and highlight the key takeaways and the implications for the merchant ecosystem.

The promises and challenges of agentic commerce

As announced in the opening panel, agentic commerce was truly the central topic of discussions at MPE 2026. The direction is set. Across the industry, the consensus is clear: agentic commerce is real and happening, even though the hype is ahead of the adoption numbers, and European merchants in particular remain cautious.

Trust remains the big unanswered question, and until it gets answered, the jump to agentic commerce will likely be a slow one. As the panellists agreed, for the foreseeable future, a fully autonomous bot-to-bot commerce model will not become reality, but a human-in-the-loop model will gain traction.

In this context, MPE 2026 highlighted the core challenges that the industry is facing: agent identity verification, confirming that an agent acts within their mandated boundaries, and filtering fraud are not problems that have a clear answer. The fraud prevention aspect becomes even more challenging to solve as agentic transactions carry fewer data signals than traditional ecommerce transactions by stripping away behavioural and biometric markers that fraud prevention strategies rely on at the moment.

What merchants are encouraged to do is to focus on product discoverability today, rather than when agentic volumes arrive, and make sure they are not blocking legitimate agents via their bot-filtering infrastructures meant to stop malicious traffic. On the consumer relationship question, some concerns were also raised, with merchants expressing that they want to maintain ownership over the customer journey and customer loyalty.

Underneath it all, the protocol fragmentation remains a significant complexity issue for merchants, with six competing protocols being launched in under a year. While PSPs will absorb part of the complexity on behalf of merchants, businesses still need to take steps to understand what is coming and where do they stand.  

Fraud is becoming industrialised

Fraud is not a problem the industry is close to solving, and the ideal of a zero-fraud future is not anywhere near the horizon. As technology evolves, so does fraud. Fraud is becoming increasingly industrialised, AI is lowering the barrier to sophisticated attacks, all while fraudsters are becoming more connected and coordinated.

The discussions dedicated to fraud and cybersecurity at MPE 2026 made one thing clear: identity exposure is compounding – each data breach creates a chain of downstream consequences in the ecosystem, and fraudsters are sharing the data and tools necessary to exploit this.

Account takeover fraud and return abuse continue to be some of the most noticeable fraud trends hitting businesses. The friction for merchants is real: in trying to reduce trust, businesses end up turning away legitimate customers, leading to revenue loss and eroding customer trust.

As agentic commerce gains traction, fraud is front and centre again. When agents start making transactions on behalf of customers, trust becomes a big issue, as does the need for KYA. The industry has also started to talk about moving from account takeover to bot takeover and the implications this will have on fraud metrics for merchants.

Europe’s evolving regulatory landscape

Europe is known for its regulatory density that, some argue, can slow down the pace of innovation. In 2026, the regulatory landscape in Europe is shifting. The panel dedicated to regulation compliance at MPE 2026 started by discussing what Europe’s PSD3/PSR package means in practice for merchants. The panellists broadly agreed that the card transparency provision (Article 31a) represents a step in the direction of achieving transparency and comparability.

When the discussion shifted to Open Banking, the consensus remains that the gap between ambition and reality remains wide. Despite its efforts, PSD2 did not manage to unlock A2A payments in Europe at scale.

Underneath both debates, a broader frustration surfaced. Fifteen separate pieces of European legislation currently touch payments in some way, and the compliance burden this creates is significant. The ask from the merchant side was not for more regulation but for better coherence, with one panellist making the case for the European institutions to provide more leadership direction and brought up the idea of a European payments services authority that would bring together expertise, supervision, competition oversight, and consumer protection under one roof.

Sovereignty, geopolitics, and resilience

Sovereignty, geopolitics, and resilience are three topics currently being discussed in Europe, and MPE dedicated a panel to the matter. Europe is taking concrete steps, from the scaling of Wero, to the progress being made on the digital euro, to build its own payments infrastructure and reduce dependency on American networks and cloud systems. As the MPE panellists highlighted repeatedly during the session, the goal isn't to replace Visa and Mastercard, it's to have fallbacks. As one panellist put it: if you want a more resilient payments infrastructure, it has to be a more diverse one. That means reinforcing domestic schemes, looking at stablecoins as institutional-grade alternative rails rather than retail payment tools. The panel was clear: more regulation isn't the answer, but more coordination is.

2026 MPE Awards gala

On the second evening of the event, during MPE Awards gala dinner, the MPE community celebrated, once again, the companies driving innovation in payments. The winners of the 2026 MPE Awards gala dinner are:

• Merchant payment acceptance of the year: Checkout.com
• Most innovative payment solution: Prommt
• Best cross-border payment solution: Thunes
• Best payment orchestration solution: APEXX Global
• Best Embedded Finance/BaaS solution: finmid
• Best platform/marketplace provider: Shopify
• Best Open Banking /A2A payments solution: Token.io
• Best use of AI & data for commerce & customer empowerment: Shopify
• Best risk, fraud & compliance solution: Elavon
• Best identity, onboarding & authentication solution: ID-Pal
• Best local or alternative payment method: Bumper
• Best international settlement & liquidity solution: Fireblocks
• MPE influencer of the year: Christian Pirkner
• Best startup/scaleup innovation award: Unetix.ai | Payments Intelligence Platform
• Chairman’s award – Merchant payments initiative of the year: Air Europa and Hands In

Next year marks 20 years of MPE and we, at The Paypers, are looking forward to the 2027 edition.

About the author

Diana Vorniceanu (Lupuleac) is a Senior Editor at The Paypers. She has an extensive background in content creation and is a graduate of Foreign Languages and Literature studies, currently specialising in payments and ecommerce. She strives to bring forward the latest trends for our readers, while investigating the ever-evolving landscape of cross-border payments, global ecommerce, payments for marketplaces and online platforms, and emerging technologies across the globe. You can reach Diana via email at diana@thepaypers.com or on LinkedIn.