The Payments Blog

The days of manually scrolling through websites, comparing prices, and filling out checkout forms are numbered. In 2026, we’ve moved past the era of "AI-assisted" shopping and entered the age of Agentic Commerce. If you haven’t heard the term yet, you soon will. Agentic Commerce refers to a world where AI agents: software entities with the authority to make decisions: don’t just recommend products; they buy them for us. According to Accenture, these agents are projected to ha

For years, the boardroom debate for fintechs and scaling platforms was a binary one: do we build our own payment stack from the ground up, or do we rent it from a giant like Stripe or Adyen? In 2026, that question has become obsolete. The industry has shifted. The "all-or-nothing" approach to infrastructure is being replaced by a much more nuanced, sophisticated strategy: the Buy AND Build hybrid model. Today, the real question isn't whether you should outsource, but which la

If you still think Stripe is just that sleek little checkout box on a website, it’s time for a bit of a rethink. As we move through 2026, the payments giant has executed a massive strategic pivot. It’s no longer just about helping humans buy shoes or subscribe to SaaS; it’s about becoming the underlying financial operating system for the "Agentic Era". We’re talking about a world where AI agents: not humans: are doing the browsing, the negotiating, the buying, and the billing

It’s June 2026, and if you open any financial news site, you’d be forgiven for feeling a bit of deja vu. The headlines are screaming about "The Great AI Correction" while simultaneously whispering about the "Institutional Crypto Renaissance." For those of us in the Australian fintech and payments space, the noise is deafening. Is AI a massive bubble about to pop like the dot-com era? Is crypto finally becoming the "boring" (read: useful) utility we were promised back in 2021?

Remember the good old days? Back in 2022, if you were a merchant selling anything slightly "edgy", say, CBD oil, high-stakes gaming, or even just luxury travel, getting a merchant account felt like trying to get into an exclusive club with a bouncer who didn’t like your shoes. One mention of "high-risk" and traditional banks would run for the hills faster than a tourist spotting a huntsman spider. But it’s June 2026, and the landscape has shifted. At RivaTech Consulting, we’v

The one-line version of the whole thing: the 2018-2021 mega-mergers bought scale. This wave buys scope. Part 1: The scale wave and why it didn't deliver Start with the deal that says it all. On 15 June 2026, Nuvei agreed to buy Payoneer for $2.75 billion. At first glance, it looks like a basic bulking-up move. It is not. Nuvei's own release made the point clearly: the combined company will let businesses "accept, hold, and move money, including stablecoin transactions, acro

It’s a Tuesday morning in 2027. You aren’t looking for a flight to Tokyo; your AI agent is. It has already negotiated a corporate rate with the airline, booked a carbon-neutral hotel that fits your "minimalist-chic" preference, and settled the bill for a local eSIM. The kicker? You didn’t press a single button. You didn’t even see a checkout screen. As AI continues to eat the payment world, the very definition of a "wallet" is changing. We’re moving away from plastic cards in

For decades, the Point of Sale (POS) terminal has been the retail equivalent of a calculator with a fancy card slot. It sat there, waited for a human to scan a barcode, beeped at a card tap, and spat out a receipt. It was passive, reactive, and: let’s be honest: a bit of a dinosaur. But as we hit the midpoint of 2026, that dinosaur hasn’t just evolved; it’s gained a prefrontal cortex. We are officially in the era of "The Brainy Terminal." Retailers from Sydney to Shanghai are