2025 Commerce & Payment Trends Every Merchant Should Track

The just-released 2025 Commerce and Payment Trends Report reveals how payments have evolved from a backend necessity into a powerful driver of customer experience, operational efficiency, and long-term growth. In this article, we break down the six most important trends shaping the payment space and what businesses need to do to stay competitive this year.

AI Delivers Tangible Business Value

From hype to real-world ROI

AI—especially generative AI—is no longer just experimental. Businesses are now deploying AI to boost efficiency, reduce fraud, and improve customer service. Common use cases include biometric checkout, automated dispute handling, and intelligent routing for invoice approvals.

The impact is measurable. Merchants using AI-powered tools report faster resolution times, increased conversion rates, and significantly reduced fraud loss.

Merchant action plan

• Implement AI fraud detection that adapts in real-time to suspicious behavior.
• Use generative AI to power customer support chat or automate backend operations.
• Feed enhanced data (like SKU, tax, and customer type) into payment processors to unlock B2B interchange savings.

Unified Commerce Goes Mainstream

All channels, one experience

Customers are now starting their journey on social media, browsing in-store, and completing purchases online—all in one seamless flow. To keep up, businesses are consolidating platforms to unify order management, inventory, pricing, and customer data across every sales channel.

43% of retailers already use unified commerce systems. Other industries, including hospitality and services, are quickly following to keep operations lean and customer experiences consistent.

Merchant action plan

• Audit how customer and order data flows between your POS, ERP, and online store.
• Use unified APIs to sync pricing, promotions, and inventory across all platforms.
• Choose platforms that centralize payments, refunds, and fulfillment.

Embedded Payments Expand Across Industries

Seamless checkout = stronger revenue

Consumers are increasingly completing purchases inside apps, games, social feeds, and smart devices. Embedded payments make this possible, enabling instant checkout without being redirected.

While large enterprises have led adoption, SMBs and mid-market companies are catching up—82% plan to increase investment in embedded payments this year. Use cases include pay-by-bank rails, instant financing, and integrated billing in verticals like healthcare, utilities, and real estate.

Merchant action plan

• Add embedded payment options—like ACH and pay-by-bank—at checkout to reduce card processing fees.
• Work with providers that integrate reconciliation and settlement into your back office.
• Explore embedded lending for B2B transactions or high-ticket items.

Digital Identity is the New Security Standard

Goodbye passwords, hello passkeys

As payment fraud grows more sophisticated, security is moving beyond passwords. Businesses are turning to tokenization, passkeys, biometric authentication, and AI-driven anomaly detection to reduce chargebacks and identity theft.

96% of merchants using biometric authentication report high impact in fraud reduction and customer satisfaction.

Merchant action plan

• Implement network tokenization if you store cards on file.
• Enable biometric login or checkout options for returning customers.
• Tighten your chargeback response workflows to align with shrinking network timelines.

POS Becomes the New Source of Intelligence

More than just a checkout

Today’s point-of-sale system is no longer just for taking payments—it’s a full intelligence hub. Merchants are using POS data to drive loyalty campaigns, staffing schedules, menu optimization, and personalized offers at checkout.

POS systems with open APIs allow real-time visibility into sales performance and customer behavior—critical for retailers, QSRs, and service businesses alike.

Merchant action plan

• Choose a POS system that offers access to real-time, SKU-level data.
• Use POS insights to drive loyalty campaigns and upsell opportunities at the moment of payment.
• Integrate your POS with inventory and CRM systems for greater operational efficiency.

Payment Orchestration Matures

Optimizing cost, speed, and success rates

Payment orchestration—managing multiple payment methods, acquirers, and processors through one control layer—is now a standard practice for large businesses and increasingly essential for growing merchants.

Benefits include smart routing of transactions to maximize approval rates, failover protection, and better insights into payment performance by region or issuer.

Merchant action plan

• Set up rules to retry failed payments automatically via secondary providers.
• Use dashboards to analyze where payments fail and optimize routing paths.
• Leverage orchestration to enable instant vendor payouts or multi-party splits.

In Summary:
The payments landscape in 2025 is fast, intelligent, and deeply embedded into the customer journey. AI is powering faster, safer checkouts. Unified platforms are making multichannel sales seamless. Embedded payments are driving frictionless conversions. And modern POS and orchestration tools are transforming data into strategic advantage. Businesses that invest now in smarter infrastructure, customer-first experiences, and data-driven operations will set the benchmark—not just for how people pay, but how they shop, trust, and return.