Payments News Update – March 6, 2026
Legal and Regulatory Developments
SPOTLIGHT: CCCA Seeks New Path to Passage
Payments Dive – March 4, 2026
Sens. Dick Durbin and Roger Marshall are once again plotting a path for passing their Credit Card Competition Act, a bill that aims to give Visa and Mastercard more competition.
The senators are angling to attach the legislation to a major housing bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, poised to land on the Senate floor for a vote this week or next. That bipartisan-backed housing bill could afford Marshall, a Republican from Kansas, and Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois who isn’t running for office again, a vehicle for advancing the bill if amendments are allowed.
The timing is unclear, but sponsors of the housing bill, Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), are aware of the Marshall-Durbin desire to offer an amendment, said Doug Kantor, who has advocated for the CCCA as general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores. Warren has previously supported capping credit card fees. . . .
7th Circ. Expedites Bank Appeal of Ill. Swipe-Fee Law
Law360 – March 3, 2026 (subscription required)
The Seventh Circuit granted banking and credit union trade groups’ bid to fast-track their appeal over the Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act after they asked to schedule the case for a decision before the law banning swipe fees on tax and tip payments takes effect July 1.
The federal appeals court’s Monday order approved the banking groups’ unopposed motion for an expedited appeal and entry of a briefing schedule. The court ordered the groups to file an opening brief by Friday. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, meanwhile, must file a combined response and opening brief by April 3.
“Oral argument in this matter will be held during the week of May 11-15 or May 18-22 and will be scheduled by separate court order,” the Seventh Circuit said. . . .
Industry Developments
SPOTLIGHT: Mastercard Unveils Trust Layer for Agentic Commerce
Finextra – March 5, 2026
Mastercard has taken aim at one of the biggest emerging issues in the agentic commerce goldrush, signing up big name partners for a new open, standards-based layer for trust.
Called Verifiable Intent, the layer creates a tamper-resistant record of what a user authorised when an AI agent acts on their behalf, establishing a shared source of truth across the ecosystem.
Designed to be agnostic to existing protocols like Google’s Agent Payments Protocol and Universal Commerce Protocol, it promises to provide cryptographic proof of authorisation that consumers, merchants, and issuers can rely on. . . .
BNPL Providers Aim to Stay in the Checkout as AI Agents Take Over Shopping
PYMNTS – March 4, 2026
The checkout button may soon belong to a machine. As artificial intelligence agents move into booking travel, managing subscriptions and executing purchases on behalf of consumers, the payment layer underneath those transactions is becoming a critical battleground.
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) providers are not waiting to find out whether AI agents will remember to offer installment options. They are embedding themselves into the infrastructure now, before the defaults get set.
Both Klarna and Affirm announced separate integrations with Stripe designed to extend their pay-later products into agentic commerce flows. The mechanism in both cases is Stripe’s Shared Payment Tokens, a tool introduced in October that allows AI agents to initiate purchases using a customer’s preferred payment method without exposing sensitive credentials. . . .