For banks, building societies and credit unions, the bar for what "good" looks like in payments is rising fast. Customers no longer see payments as a utility. They see them as part of the experience and, increasingly, as a way to optimize their financial lives.
Marqeta's 2025 State of Payments report captures this shift. The study surveyed 3,000 consumers and 1,000 small and medium-sized businesses across the US and UK. For financial services leaders, the findings are hard to ignore: customers want smarter tools, less friction, and more value embedded into their everyday spend.
If you are mapping out card and payments strategy for 2026, this is the data you need to be working from.
What consumers are signaling now
Two findings explain why this moment feels different.
First, consumers are increasingly open to payment experiences that feel intelligent and automated. In the survey, 32% of consumers said they would use a mobile wallet that makes purchases automatically based on past behavior. That is not novelty. It is a signal that "convenience" is evolving into "delegation." Consumers want fewer decisions, fewer steps, and fewer moments where they have to think about payments at all.
Second, consumers are telling us they are tired of fragmented loyalty. 63% of consumers said they want unified rewards and loyalty management across brands. For financial services, this matters because loyalty is no longer a layer on top of a card program. It is increasingly the deciding factor in which card becomes top of wallet and which relationship wins long term.
Why this should concern financial services leaders
This is not a theoretical trend. It has direct implications for the metrics that matter.
When payment experiences are clunky, customers switch cards, abandon wallets, and disengage from rewards. When experiences are seamless, automated, and consistent across channels, customers consolidate spend, renew subscriptions more reliably, and stay engaged longer. Experience is not separate from performance. Experience drives performance.
The "unified rewards" signal is equally significant. Consumers are effectively asking card program managers to take on a new role: help them manage value across the places they already spend, without making it complicated. That is a significant shift in what a card program is expected to do.
Two markets, two mindsets
The US and UK are not moving in lockstep, and for financial institutions operating across both, this matters.
US consumers are prioritizing speed, simplicity, and personalization through wallets and tools that automate checkout and recurring transactions. UK consumers place greater emphasis on wallets that organise rewards and track loyalty across brands, alongside rising demand for seamless, app-connected experiences.
The destination is shared: make payments and rewards feel effortless. But the path differs, and regional expectations shape what trust and value look like in practice. Strategy needs to reflect that.
What modern can look like
The report points clearly to where customers are headed. Three directions stand out.
Rewards that feel unified, not scattered. If 63% of consumers want unified rewards management, the design prompt is simple: reduce fragmentation. That means reward experiences visible inside the core banking app rather than buried in separate portals, rewards applied automatically where possible rather than requiring manual activation, and reward structures that adapt to actual behavior over time rather than static categories customers have to remember. The best programs increasingly feel like an extension of a customer's digital life, not a separate system to manage.
Wallet-first payment experiences. For customers, wallet-first is not a feature. It is the default. If wallet provisioning, tokenized payments, and cross-channel consistency feel like an afterthought, it undermines trust and increases friction at exactly the moments that matter most.
Smarter decisioning that reduces friction. The 32% statistic is not a call for every provider to build auto-purchasing wallets. It is a signal that customers are increasingly willing to trade complexity for convenience when they trust the experience. Fewer interruptions in routine payments, more proactive controls customers can set once and rely on, and payment experiences that help customers avoid avoidable declines all move in this direction.
The bigger strategic shift
Marqeta's research frames consumers as financial orchestrators, managing their financial lives across multiple payment methods, wallets, loyalty programs, and platforms simultaneously. Providers that help customers simplify that orchestration will have a meaningful advantage. Those that do not risk becoming a background utility while wallets, platforms, and rewards ecosystems capture the relationship.
A useful question for any financial services team planning for 2026: where are you still asking customers to do work the product should be doing for them?
That might show up as customers needing to remember which card earns the best rewards, managing multiple reward dashboards, being bounced out of an app to complete a payment journey, or experiencing unexpected declines and inconsistent wallet behavior.
The State of Payments data suggests customers are ready for something better.
Read the report
The 2025 State of Payments report sets out the full picture, including the regional differences, consumer expectations, and SMB data that should be shaping your card and payments strategy right now. If your competitors are reading it, you should be too.
Read the Marqeta 2025 State of Payments report here.
