Platform payments 2026 trends | Leaders in Payments Podcast

Hello, and welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast. I'm your host, Greg Myers. Joining me today is a very special guest, Matt Downs, President Integrated and Platforms at Global Payments. Matt, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate your time and welcome to the show.

Greg, thanks so much for having me, excited to be here.

So, this episode is part of our Signal Series where we're cutting through the noise to reveal what truly matters in payments and fintech. Today we're digging into platform payments 2026 trends and really what's new for platforms and ISVs as payments become less of a feature and more of a growth engine. We're seeing platforms pulled in two directions at once. On one side, the push toward embedded payments and embedded finance to deliver smoother experiences and unlock new business models. And on the other side, the reality is that AI is accelerating fraud just as quickly as it's improving defenses. So, we're going to break this episode or conversation into three themes embedded payments, embedded finance, and AI plus fraud. And we're going to get practical about what's changing, what's coming next, and how platform leaders can stay ahead. So, Matt, before we dive into the meat of this, if you don't mind, can you walk us through your professional journey and how you got to Global Payments?

Yeah, it's a great question, Greg. I'm not going to give you the whole thing because we'd be here for a bit, but I've actually been in the software and payments business now going back 25 years. And I'll date myself. I started out as an MLS. That's a merchant level sales, and I'm not even sure that term exists anymore. And I went to work for First Data and I spent the first seven years of my career selling payment and technology solutions through a bank channel. And, you know, through the acquisition of First Data to KKR, I decided to switch it up. I went entrepreneurial and I actually co-founded a company. And at that time, we built one of the very first integrated payments businesses. This was in the 2008 downturn. We partnered with what was then Radiant Systems. Everybody knows them now as NCR. And we literally built them a white label, one of the very first integrated payments businesses. And that's where, Greg, I saw the vision of payments through technology was really where it was going to get consumed. And I've stayed on that track the last 17 plus years. Did that startup for several years. We turned around and sold that business, joined what was then Fifth Third Processing Solutions, which was a business that was carved out of Fifth Third Bank Advent funded, which IPO'd as Vantiv. And from there we bought our biggest competitor, Worldpay. Worldpay got bought by FIS. Many people know the story. And then just about nine days ago, we closed a transaction with Global Payments. And, you know, buried inside that journey, I did step away for a couple of years, went into the software business throughout that journey. But over the last 17 years, I've stayed on this trend of where does software meet payments? I was right there when the original PayFac® business, which we actually own the trademark, when we kicked that off, we were a scaled player in integrated payments and we continue to be. And then I saw this opportunity to take that payment facilitation model and bring it further down market as a PayFac-as-a-Service business. Well, I wasn't here when Worldpay acquired Payrix. I was a very, very big voice for the preceding years that we needed to be in that business. And that actually triggered my return to the company in mid-2022 and I've been running the platforms business ever since. Most recently, through the close of Global Payments, I was named the head, right, as both companies have got a pretty big foothold in the business and have been serving ISVs for 25 plus years. And now I lead that business reporting to the CEO of Global Payments.

All right. Well, most of our audience does know who Global Payments is and of course, you know, the Worldpay acquisition, as you mentioned, just closed. Maybe give us the 50,000 foot level of the company and maybe kind of where your team fits into the broader organization.

Yeah, no, great question. You know, the new company's got significant scale. We will play across, and both companies had a lot of scale kind of going into it. You know, combined, we'll process over $3.7 trillion. We're powering over 6 million merchant locations worldwide in 175 countries and that presence from that large multinational all the way down to SMB allows us to take a lot of scale and put it to work through products, technology, and delivery. Candidly, the two companies coming together makes a lot of sense. You know, Worldpay had gotten a lot of presence on both international and enterprise and that was an area where Worldpay had a lot of strength. In the integrated business island, we had a lot of strength the diversity of the models, which we'll, I'm sure we're going to talk about, and I won't go deep right now, where Global Payments fit really well in the combination. They had a lot of strength in SMB and through both their software-owned suites, right? Which can't be that's my competition built in this new business, but Global Payments has got their own proprietary. That was an area for Worldpay that was a gap, right? We had ISOs and we had bank channels that candidly needed more products. So when you put the companies together, they were highly complementary with not lots of overlap, but areas where combined together we're going to we're going to be able to compete more holistically, both directly and through our channel partnerships. How my group fits in is, you know, as I shared, I led the integrated, I've led the integrated platforms business for Worldpay as we combine, we're going to have pretty significant scale. We actually are powering over 4,000 software companies around the globe with over 2 million end merchant endpoints, right? You might call them mids, you might call them merchants, you might call them submerchants, but over 2 million merchants, which by a factor of our competitors is pretty significant. We'll process over a trillion dollars as a standalone business, accounting for more than 25% of Global Payments as revenue. And we'll scan the gamut as we always had for everything from turnkey, referral, integrated payments to payment facilitation as a service, all the way up to you know our wholesale PayFac® offering, which we continue to be a market leader, empower some of the biggest software brands in North America and around the globe with that.

Okay, so let's dive into the first topic, which is embedded payments. So, to set the table, when you look at payments for platforms heading into 2026 as we move through 2026, what are the top two or three trends that you think will matter the most and why those?

Yeah, I think a couple things, Greg. I think the trend of what I'll call the embedded experience, you might think of it as embedded payments. You're going to continue to see more and more software companies look at kind of how do they do payments today, and depending on where they want to invest and the experience they want to pull off for their users. I think we're continuing to see high demand for those, what I'll call embedded experiences. And that's you know, moving from just the payment application into the kind of total workflow. How is chargeback integrated natively into the software servicing kind of the full experience, right? As you know, some of the large software companies have set the bar for what a great embedded payment experience is that's pushing that need. So, you know, globally there's over 60,000 ISVs. Domestically, I estimate that number kind of more in the 15,000 software range. Many of those companies are becoming exploratory. How do they provide a richer experience? That's probably trend one. And then trend two is software companies in the need to kind of go further, right? I'd kind of point to the Etsy's of the world and others that started providing those merchants and creators the ability to kind of do something other than just payments, whether that's working capital, lines of credit, cards, payroll, etc, that need for that wider set of financial experiences. We're absolutely seeing that trend take off too, and that market's going to be big and it's available to those software companies. On the merchant side, you know, maybe to answer the question there is I think we're seeing desire for more cloud technology, meaning I don't want to have to think about payments if I want a feature or I need a new payments acceptance means. It just needs to work and it needs to be brought to me. They're also looking for a wider set of services, either proactive or reactively. I'm sure we're not going to get through this session, Greg, without talking about what's going on at the fraud front. But we're seeing large demand for both fraud detection and solutions to kind of combat, including even, you know, friendly consumer, what they call friendly fraud, we're seeing that on the uptake. And then honestly, a constant theme, and they won't merchants won't ask for it like this, but they're looking for better ways to bond with their consumers to get that recurring traffic and provide those great experiences, right? Some of the largest merchants are able to pull off with finesse.

Okay. So specifically talking about the software companies or the platforms, those business models are continuing to evolve. I mean, you mentioned adding more kind of, you know, financial products. There's different ways to monetize payments, they're bundling products together. Kind of what are the things that are evolving and what's changing the fastest in that space?

Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things is software companies of all sizes are thinking about how to bring those embedded experiences in. But the reality is that lifts really big, especially if you're going from maybe you started off in kind of either you're passive on your payments where you let customer choice evolve, right, through more of a gateway solution, or maybe you've been in an integrated relationship, or maybe even this agent, an agent relationship, right, to use these payment terms. But that desire to kind of take on more of that stack and provide those services, it takes real investment in expertise, knowledge, training, etc. And it's fairly easy to underestimate, right? Get in the buying cycle, talk to a provider like a Global Payments or one of our competitors, and it always starts out on the commercial side. You know, what are my economics? How's this going to work? The reality is the rubber meets the road on how do you actually stand it up. And some of us are very good at what I'll call the professional services end of the arena. Others have much more of a SDK developer-led experience, right? Where you're going to integrate it and then you got it operated, and that comes with its own set of challenges. You know, I think one of the opportunities that's out there, and a couple of us are on it, including yours truly, and that's how do you build products that provide more of that experience so that the heavy lifting that the platform company or the software company needs to do, we help them do it in a way that they're still going to have to invest and still have to bring in some expertise. But, you know, if you think about some of the most successful software companies out there when it comes to offering embedded payments and financial experiences, they've had to put a considerable amount of staff on the payroll in order to eloquently pull off those experiences. We're thinking about how to do that at the product level and at the professional services level in a way that kind of helps the lift. And I think that's a big piece that we're not being directly asked for. Innately, though, through sales discovery or working with existing customers, and you understand where the problems are in the relationship and the untapped opportunities, that's one of the things that's definitely kind of evolving. And that's how do you help them in a way that is scalable, product driven, and consistent?

Okay. When you're out there talking to these software companies and platform leaders, what's the one question that they should be asking about payments in 2026 that you know they're usually not asking?

Yeah, I think naturally the conversations go to a little bit of outside in, but I actually would recommend to most of them. The question I try to ask them is what's the inside out question? That's do you know what your nearest competitor, right? The software market's hugely competitive. AI is upping the benchmark, especially for new entrants and people that can kind of go AI native. You know, one of the things I ask most CPOs or CEOs when I have a sit-down with them, and that's do you understand where your nearest competitor is and how they differentiate their core product through either payments or financial services? And very explicitly, what are they doing about it? And it's an interesting question because a lot of times they know where they're at in their own journey, but they've actually not stopped to study where the competitors are in those journeys and kind of how are they from a competitive standpoint thinking about how do they build that into their product and continue to kind of keep up?

Okay, well, let's pivot from embedded payments to embedded finance. And I love the distinction because I think it is a different world when you get into the embedded finance, but I think it's a huge need and growing, and you've talked about it a little already. But when a platform adds more financial products beyond payments, what's their real goal there? Is it driving revenue? Is it stickier retention? Is it a better user experience? What are you seeing there?

Yeah, I think for many software companies, if they've not kind of considered it, it's a little bit of a discovery process, Greg, that we try to take them through. You know, I think if you start with the premise that all software companies, their trusted brand with that user or that merchant. And the reason I say that is all their business and financial data essentially is in that system, and that system's what's the lifeblood of that business. Add onto that, most software companies are either vertically or potentially horizontally oriented. What I would actually say is that, you know, they study that vertical better than anybody out there, right? So, pick your vertical restaurant, veterinary, dental, childcare, they actually understand the workflows, the challenges, and the opportunities within that vertical better than anyone. And I would argue, and this is a made-up number, but I bet they have 500% better chance of solving real-world problems for that business than any brick-and-mortar bank or any digital bank that's more kind of generic in nature. So, I actually like to start the conversation there, they maybe don't have the scale, they don't have the regulatory licenses necessary to pull all this off and we do a lot of that for them and make it easy. But what they uniquely have is they are the trusted source for that business, as well as they understand the challenges for that business. So, you know, whether it's reconciliation in a trust accounting environment, right? Think about attorneys and kind of everything from that off to where those funds land and being able to reconcile that with banking-as-a-service solution, or whether it's watching cash flows in a business that's capital intensive and understanding, hey, they're about to run out of cash because payroll is going to hit Friday, and Thursday, we think where they're going to be at a low watermark, and putting that working capital out in front of that business at the right time when they need it. These are things that these software companies are uniquely positioned to. So sometimes the conversations start with a business metric, or a KPI, or an outcome. But I think you got to start with “the why”. And those are just examples of some of the why. But those outcomes do manifest, as you touched about, right? And that's higher retentive value of that software base, which all their board of directors and investors care about. You know, higher RPO shows up in better NPS, gives them that where I kind of went in that last question was better sales positioning up front for that at the acquisition point. These are all the reasons to get into it. Yes, you can make more money, but I can tell you, if you wrap the three or four of those other KPIs, or outcomes, back around “the why”, you end up with a really, really winning strategy.

Okay. So where do you see platforms making the most traction with embedded finance right now? I mean, there's so many options out there for them: payroll, cards, banking, capital, loans, insurance. I mean, there's so many. What's the best first move, in your opinion, for these platforms that want to start embedding other products beyond payments in 2026?

Yeah, it's such a good question. I actually think the first question they got to ask themselves is, who are they going to partner with and how do they become successful? So, I'll be a little self-promoting because that's just who I am. Everybody probably watched your podcast and knows me. I think you got to pick a right partner that's thought about the technology, the go-to-market, and then the overhead to pull off these products, right? As we talked about five minutes ago, just pulling off embedded payments and taking on conversations like fraud, risk, transaction monitoring, pricing, like that's a lot to bite off for a software company because this is not their primary focus. Now I'm going to take you into a set of financial services. You're probably not armed to answer a question about what's my balance at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night, right? If a business owner is reconciling their business. I think picking the right partner that's thought about how do they make the technology really lightweight, how do they make the go-to-market super easy, and then how do they solve for some of that operational stuff is really, really important. So, I think first step is get the right partner that's thought about that stuff. And where I tell any software company is don't jump into the deep end, think about how do you do it the easiest, and then as you get more comfortable weighed in, much like you probably did on the payments front. To answer your question, because it was product focused, I think it really depends on the vertical for the software company. For many of them, I would say the natural beach head is working capital, because every business needs cash. It's a matter of generally when and kind of how much. And we've seen, you know, different success factors, you know, without naming clients. You know, I had one that's super capital intensive. 70% of their install base actually took a working capital product within 12-months of launch on the program. Where I've got another, that's what we'll call more in the professional services, think healthcare, dental, etc., where those type of businesses have got multiple avenues, right, into different capital lines. So, I think it really depends on the business. We see most companies either start on the capital side with that product, drive penetration, then bring banking-as-a-service in, versus other customers start maybe more on the banking as a service product and then potentially tap into capital. It really comes down to what's that business's problems, what's going to be that compelling event, and how do you actually customize those products for that particular vertical in the way that they consume or need different financial services products. But it's usually one of those two, Greg, is where we see most clients, you know, kind of pick up and go get traction. Later stages, we're seeing opportunities for APAR or other things, but hitting with one of those basic beachhead products is kind of where most software companies start the journey.

Okay. Well, that definitely makes sense. And we've talked about all the positive reasons to do this. So, let's talk about unfortunately the negative. So, what are some of the biggest execution pitfalls that you see platforms as they're expanding into embedded finance? Is it the compliance burden, operational support, their own capital constraints? Kind of what tends to break first?

Yeah, I would tell you, I think I maybe jumped ahead on this question. I didn't know this one was coming, but I would tell you it kind of goes back to if you think about where most software companies, telling you my career story, if you think where most of them were 15 years ago, it was, hey, I want to provide my customers a secure payment proposition, create a referral relationship, and start to get that ,what I'll call mailbox money, through a referral relationship. And then over time it kind of evolved on I want to take on more for different reasons. I want to own the experience. I want to be able to drive the product at the pace I want to. Maybe it's an economic driver. I think embedded finance is kind of on the same realm for most companies, right? When you start thinking about the compliance and what it takes to service a bank account, that looks very, very different than payments. I mean, it's a whole different domain with a whole new set of expertise. And I've been on that journey for three years, investing tens of millions of dollars into our product to kind of get up. And we've really gone with a best of breed approach through an orchestration platform for our partners. So, I absolutely have some of my PayFac® and other clients that have kind of jumped all the way into the deep end and have in-sourced and built those products themselves. For most of our clients here, we've provided them more of an out-of-the-box solution that provides to go-to-market, the operational, so that they can learn. And that learning curve can be hugely expensive, both in dollars and opportunity cost. But that's how we're helping clients solve it. But it's a whole new vector going from accepting payments to everything that comes along with providing business services, across banking and cards when it comes to risk exposure compliance. It's not the same. It's a hundred percent different. So if you're not willing to invest, learn, and cut that learning curve down, you're effectively kind of doubling the overhead of jumping into embedded finance versus taking a little bit lighter-weight approach and doing more of the partner and where can two companies come together to kind of bring the best pieces in order to kind of solve the merchant's opportunities and get help on that learning curve.

Okay. All right. Well, let's transition the conversation to AI and fraud. So, how should platform leaders be thinking differently about fraud this year when these risk decisions are happening? I mean, basically in real time and AI is on both sides of the fight right now?

Yeah, it's a great question. It's super dynamic. I go back to where I started, and that's if you're a platform leader, your customers are buying payments and embedded finance because of your trusted brand and the fact that you're smack dab right in the middle of their business and helping manage their business. And I tell you, the fraud game is dynamic, and it is moving. When you ask the question 2026, I think it's moving by month and by quarter is what we're seeing. You know, AI has changed the game. We're now seeing fraud both upstream, we're seeing it real time, and it's absolutely being adaptive, meaning the ability for it to move around these fraudsters have got a lot at their disposal, whether it's agentic AI, we're seeing deep fakes that are extremely strong, machine-to-machine attacks and automated scripts that allow these fraudsters immense scale to attack. And if you have traditional defense, I got news, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when it's going to happen. This fraud's becoming more and more sophisticated. The guys wearing the other jerseys are able to adopt AI and this advanced tooling in order to kind of really target. And again, if your primary piece is building software for a vertical market, the way that they can get into your system, and it does happen, if you're not investing at scale and you get all this financial PII and data in your environment, they are fully coming up and understanding that and able to kind of target you and your ability to kind of match their investment and fight against that scaled fraud. It potentially could be a really losing battle. You know, what I would share is years ago, as I told my career story, platforms could really focus just on the payments acceptance layer, right? Or maybe the checkout, right, in order to kind of fight fraud and you could use descoping, other technologies in order to kind of cut your risk. The challenge is you jump into embedded and now you've got data all the way through your environment because now you're in chargeback conversations and maybe you're having some risk conversations. These fraudsters now understand if they can infiltrate your platform because you're in every stage of that merchant life cycle. They got multiple attack points to kind of come in, right? Because they know that you've got onboarding data, you've got real-time account accessibility to potentially payouts, pay ins, etc. You know, it's not about the auth anymore, right? They're going to use payment methods, refunds, and chargebacks to figure out how do they create that fraud in your platform and how do they get the money out. You know, one of the things that we did, we announced we did an acquisition at Worldpay, and now Global's going to be the beneficiary of that. It was a company called Ravelin, and it was UK-based. It's an AI native platform that understands fraud all through that flow I just talked about. We actually are plugging it into our product called FraudSight, which is our front-end product. I've deployed it across multiple of my portfolios, and we're seeing up to 70% of that fraud within the transaction flow getting shut down, which means better experience for both the software customers, user, and the consumer. And that our AI-driven approach that is providing real-time fraud prevention layer right there at the front line is really helping. And it's leveraging everything from machine learning to device intelligence. I actually gave my partner base a view of it in Denver in October, and it's a pretty dynamic tool. We're really excited about it. We're just getting started. We've got over a hundred folks over in London that, you know, wake up every day and just think about how to put AI to use to attack these fraud patterns, as well as the kind of, you know, where the fraud's actually going. I think my key message in all that is fraud is no longer a point-in-time event. You got to think about it from end to end. And if you're not deploying AI or you don't have a partner like Global Payments, Worldpay, you should get one because of that AI, we can see it upstream long before it comes. We can react in real time, and we can somewhat actually predict what's coming next, right? Because of our size, scale database, and this new capability that we've installed in the business in the last 18 months.

Okay. Well, if you were advising a software company or a platform that's either launching or scaling in 2026, what would you say are the non-negotiables when it comes to security and compliance?

Yeah, I think you got to attack it with a layer. It's going to come at you in waves. And I think you need a layered AI defense approach, the new paradigm’s kind of been set. You know, if you're running anything that's legacy rules-based, it's not going to keep up pace with these AI-powered attacks. You need something that's got multi-layered controls across both your network, your device set, and it actually understands the behavioral aspect of your platform as well as any of those authorization layers. Additionally, compliance expectations will continue to shift upstream. So, you, as the platform, if you're not keeping up, you will be carrying more of this responsibility. So again, as you've ingested and taken on embedded payments as well as potentially embedded finance, the bar is going to get raised as far as how you're actually protecting your platform. Whatever fraud tool you choose, it needs to actually protect the entire transaction life cycle, all the way from that first web visit, onboarding, all the way through, to that refund and dispute process, because that's where they're going to attack you. You know, we're approaching that, as I shared, kind of with our FraudSight and we also have a second product called Disputes Defender™. I alluded to it when we opened up, but we're seeing increasingly a friendly fraud, right? Someone that actually may come into your business, pick up a pizza every Friday night, smile at your face, run right home, and charge that off. And, you know, the issuing banks may or may not be keeping up with that. FraudSight is actually going to help you actually detect where you think you got that great consumer coming into that business and smiling at your face. And you think they're your most loyal customer, but meanwhile, they're getting you on the backside. We're actually going to be able to help you with that.

Okay. So, you know, one of the things that I often think about is fraud and security. These software companies have to take on more and be involved in more as they embed more products. So, what's the trade-off between like the friction that that can cause and the trust so that they don't secure themselves out of growth?

Yeah, it's ever evolving, right? You know, I've got some competitors that within the platform space that are great at onboarding and they'll bring you up quick, but they'll put a lot of friction in the backside. And remember, for platforms company, you're the trusted brand. They're expecting a great payments experience. So, if you slap your own brand on your payments product, but you're putting that friction in there, you're susceptible. So as you go through and find that strategic partner that you're going to build a payments business on, I think understanding what are those tools that they're going to help you provide, are you sitting down and having the right conversation about how are you secure in your environment? And how's that provider going to really wrap around you and ask that tough question that you just alluded to, Greg, and that's what's that risk-hold process going to look like? How is that point-of-sale transaction going to be kind of handled when it comes, or how is that card not present transaction going to be handled when it comes in? And what does a fraud stop look like? And what other false positive rights? And how are they going to help you out in the chargeback department? Because if you've missed one of these points and you provide a bad experience to that small business, you're risking your core business, and that's your software license. Meaning one of your competitors may pop up and go, oh, I figured that piece of the pie out. So, I literally think you've got to sit down and really understand how's your provider, because you could be an expert in this, but it's going to cost you a lot. If you're leaning into a partner, how are they helping you holistically think about that, and ensure that you're protecting that business to the right end, but not putting so much friction in the process that a business may just literally pull not only the payments, but your software right out of their business because you put too much friction in their business.

Okay. Well, Matt, one final question, want to kind of zoom out on this one. So, if a platform or software company wants to be in the top tier of their vertical, as you said, very competitive on almost every vertical you can name, it's very competitive, right? So, if they want to be in the top tier by the end of 2026, what are the two or three decisions that they need to make this year in order to get there?

Wow, that’s a great question. You know, there's a Bain stat that says 50% of all software companies will make a new buying decision on a payments partnership between 2000, this is a little dated, Greg, between 2024 and 2028. So, I actually think it's, and I even encourage my own clients, and I've been talking to my Worldpay clients. I'm excited to get out and meet all my new Global Payments clients. You can imagine I have some overlap, but I look forward to spending time with some of them, as well as meeting some of the folks that are newer in my remit. But I think evaluating your payment strategy and understanding where are you on this curve, where are your competitors on both fronts, as we talked about, both embedded payments and you know, are you in the right spot where you need to be? How is the experience being delivered? What's your investment cycle and expectations, as well as looking at the embedded finance and saying, should you start that journey? And most importantly, can you afford to not start that journey? And then secondly, I think also looking at this ecosystem that's surrounding them, right? Whether some of the stuff that's going on with the card brands and interchange or some of these patterns around fraud and the usage of AI to protect your business. Ten years ago, you had the luxury of probably being in a software business and being neutral. I would say you absolutely don't have that option anymore. You've got to get in the game and figure out what is your strategy on these fronts, and do you have the right kind of partner in order to make sure that you maintain the leadership position or kind of differentiating.

Okay. Well, Matt, I think that's a great way to wrap up the show. So, thank you so much for being here. I know your time is very valuable, especially with all the new things that you have to do. So, I appreciate your time and thank you so much for being on the show.

Thanks, Greg appreciate it.

And to all your listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well. And until the next story.