We wanted to take this opportunity to wish you a happy festive season and to say thank you for being a loyal reader and member of the Payment Expert community!
We hope to take some time to rest over the next few weeks and come back recharged in 2026. As you enjoy your break, we wanted to resurface our top articles from 2025 to inspire you as you head into a new year.
Rachael Kennedy, Editor – Payment Expert
TOP 10 ARTICLES
Jolting the markets at number 10: XRP’s Trump-era surge
As Washington geared up for a changing of the guard, XRP quietly stole the show on US trading screens. In January, the Ripple-linked token briefly overtook Bitcoin as the most traded asset on Coinbase, with volumes surging 25% in 24 hours and its price climbing to $3.30 – its highest level since 2018. The rally followed a high-profile meeting between Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Donald Trump, and growing speculation around an XRP spot ETF to follow in Bitcoin and Ether’s footsteps.
Trump’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, used his confirmation hearing to champion crypto as “about freedom” and signal a harder line on central bank digital currencies. By rejecting CBDCs as tools for countries “with no other investment alternatives,” Bessent set out a vision of a US financial system where privately issued digital assets, not state-backed ones, sit at the centre of innovation.
For Payment Expert readers, it was an early sign that 2025 would be the year US crypto policy shifted from defensive posture to active positioning.
👉 Read the full article here: XRP sees large trading growth as Trump’s treasury-elect nominee rejects CBDCs
Clearing in at number 9: Europe’s instant payments moment of truth
Europe’s regulators rang in 2025 with a hard deadline rather than gentle encouragement. From January 9, payment service providers in eurozone countries were required to be able to receive SEPA Instant payments and charge the same for instant as for standard credit transfers, with non-euro EU states following in October. The Instant Payments Regulation is designed to drag Europe back into contention with front-runners like Brazil’s Pix and India’s UPI, using fines of up to 1% of annual turnover to push PSPs into line and signal that the “stick over carrot” era for payments compliance has arrived.
Smaller banks and PSPs faced significant operational upgrades to offer 24/7 coverage, while risk and compliance teams must compress fraud, AML and sanctions checks into seconds instead of hours. Voices from across the industry, including payabl. and Quant, framed the deadline as both a catch-up play and a competitive gambit: SEPA Instant not only raises the bar for EU providers, it also puts pressure on the UK to evolve Faster Payments and protect its claim to leadership in Open Banking and account-to-account innovation.
👉 Read the full article here: EU instant payments deadline shows regulators favouring ‘stick over carrot’
Cross-border tensions at number 8: Washington vs Brazil’s Pix
When the US Trade Representative opened a Section 301 probe into Brazil’s instant payments system Pix, it sounded like a niche infrastructure dispute. Instead, it exposed a fault line between public digital rails and private card giants. With Pix now handling nearly half of Brazil’s domestic transactions and bringing tens of millions of people into the financial system, Washington asked whether its central bank–run model unfairly disadvantages American firms, from card networks to Big Tech.
What followed was pure payments geopolitics. Threats of tariffs, rows over social media regulation and Amazon deforestation, and even pressure around Brazil’s domestic politics turned Pix into a symbol of digital sovereignty. President Lula’s blunt defence – “Pix is Brazil’s” – and the government’s “PIXéNosso, My Friend” campaign framed the platform as national patrimony, just as the US hinted it might push for structural changes to its governance.
👉 Read the full article here: Why the US government has taken aim at Pix
Rebuilding the rails at number 7: PayPal’s quiet overhaul
Behind the Q2 headlines, PayPal set out a three-year “Q2 2025 Plan” that goes far beyond a standard cost-cutting exercise. A $300 million restructuring will close data centres, push the firm onto third-party cloud infrastructure and reshape its workforce, all while management asks investors to stay focused on higher-margin plays like branded checkout, Venmo and PYUSD.
With key details still opaque – from how many jobs are at risk to which units are most exposed – the plan raises as many questions as it answers about PayPal’s long-term strategy and its ability to modernise while cash flow is already under pressure.
👉 Read the full article here: Inside PayPal’s restructuring plans
Flagged by the FCA at number 6: Monzo’s £21m compliance wake-up call
Monzo’s hypergrowth years caught up with it in July, when the FCA handed the digital bank a £21.1m fine for serious financial crime control failings. Between 2018 and 2020, the regulator found Monzo had onboarded customers on the basis of “limited, and in some cases, obviously implausible information” and then went on to open more than 33,000 high-risk accounts in breach of a formal restriction meant to stop exactly that.
The case put a sharper edge on the FCA’s warnings to UK challengers: speed, slick UX and automation do not excuse weak AML frameworks or thinly staffed compliance teams. Monzo has since overhauled its controls and had its VREQ lifted, but the enforcement action stands as a reference point for how quickly a fast-growing fintech can be pulled back to earth when governance fails to keep pace.
👉 Read the full article here: FCA hits Monzo with £21m fine as compliance struggles trail rapid growth
Super app ambitions at number 5: Musk’s X Money play
Barely into 2025, X confirmed what Elon Musk had been teasing since he bought Twitter: payments are coming. Under the banner “X Money”, the platform secured money transmitter licences in 33 US states, laying groundwork for a service that would move X closer to Musk’s long-stated WeChat-style “super app” vision. Code leaks and CEO Linda Yaccarino’s New Year post fuelled expectations of an early launch, even before coverage is nationwide.
The big unknown is what sits under the hood. With licences still missing in key markets such as New York and persistent hints that “crypto will probably be a good amount of rails”, the project sits at the intersection of state-by-state money regulation, Musk’s long-standing affinity for Bitcoin and Dogecoin, and a Trump administration signalling a softer line on digital assets.
👉 Read the full article here: X Money: Elon Musk’s bold step towards a ‘Super App’
Litigation headwinds at number 4: Visa’s costly Q2
Visa’s second-quarter numbers showed a network firing on most cylinders: net revenue up 9% to $9.6bn, cross-border volumes jumping 13% as travel rebounded, and 60.7 billion transactions processed in just three months. Strip out special items and earnings were solid too, with non-GAAP net income rising 6%. But a $992m provision for the long-running US interchange MDL turned what could have been a straightforward beat into a reminder that legacy legal risks still carry real P&L consequences.
Even as GAAP net income dipped 2%, Visa kept capital returns in high gear, handing $5.6bn back to shareholders through buybacks and dividends and green-lighting a new $30bn repurchase programme. The tension between strong cash generation, ongoing innovation in consumer and commercial payments, and a litigation drag that refuses to fade made this one of Payment Expert’s most closely read earnings deep dives of the year.
👉 Read the full article here: Legal toll dims Visa’s bottom line in otherwise resilient Q2
Switching formats at number 3: Swift’s MT goodbye after 20 years
On November 22, the cross-border payments industry finally hit a milestone it has been talking about since 2004. Swift’s coexistence period for CBPR+ ended, legacy MT instructions such as MT103 and MT202 were retired, and ISO 20022 stopped being a future project plan and became the only language allowed for cross-border payment messages. On the surface, nothing changed for consumers. Under the hood, banks that have relied on translation layers and “good enough” data suddenly face stricter validation, structured address rules and a rapidly shrinking margin for delay.
As experts warned, the shift is as much about AML, sanctions and fraud controls as it is about messaging formats, and the next wave of deadlines – from address structuring to non-payment MT retirements – is already in view. ISO 20022 now represents both a compliance hurdle and, for those ready to exploit its data, a potential product and revenue play.
👉 Read the full article here: Swift’s ISO 20022 cutover: The end of MT and a 20-year promise
Forced migrations at number 2: Inside the Fiserv investor lawsuit
When Fiserv was hit with a class action in July, it turned a technical story about “back book conversions” into one of the year’s most closely watched legal battles in merchant acquiring. The complaint alleges that Fiserv propped up Clover’s growth story by forcing cost-sensitive Payeezy merchants onto a more expensive, complex POS stack, then failed to tell investors how quickly many of those small businesses were churning away to rivals like Square and Toast.
What might once have been seen as a routine product sunset suddenly looked like a governance test: how clearly should listed payment companies disclose migration risk, and how “sticky” are SMB merchants in a market where alternatives are only a few clicks away?
👉 Read the full article here: Fiserv’s being sued. Here’s what you need to know
Tapping into the top spot at number 1: BNPL comes to Uber
Our most-read story of the year was all about BNPL moving from checkout buttons to everyday movement. Klarna’s tie-up with Uber and Uber Eats brought installment payments and Pay Now options to rides and food delivery in the US, Germany and Sweden, letting users split or bundle trips and orders while Uber looks to localise its payment mix and trim acceptance costs.
👉 Read the full article here: Buy Now, Pay Later available on Uber via Klarna
As we wrap up 2025, these stories chart a year where super apps, instant payments, ISO cutovers and courtroom drama all jostled for space alongside everyday taps, rides and takeaways. From Washington’s stare-down with Pix to BNPL at the Uber checkout, our top reads show just how far payments have moved from the back office to the front page.
Here’s hoping 2026 brings smoother migrations, fewer lawsuits, and maybe one or two pleasant surprises at the checkout.
