A shift is underway in retail — redefining how products are discovered, experiences delivered, and value created. In a landscape shaped by rising customer expectations and rapid technology adoption, loyalty is earned through personalized, seamless journeys that anticipate needs, remove friction, and deliver relevance at every touchpoint.

This report presents ten strategic insights into how retail brands are adapting. The themes are clear: AI is accelerating change, mobile-first engagement is now standard, and personalization — still concentrated post-purchase — must extend across the entire journey. Generative AI is reshaping content economics, third-party narratives influence purchases, and governance gaps persist in AI use.

In Consumer Goods, marketing is being reshaped by the convergence of B2B and B2C dynamics, omnichannel expectations, and the need for speed, personalization, and relevance. Buyers, whether retailers, distributors, or end consumers, now demand seamless, value-driven experiences across every touchpoint. For brands, this means balancing mass-market reach with precision engagement, while navigating shorter product cycles and fierce digital-first competition.

The Global Payments 2026 Commerce and Payment Trends Report is here—your guide to the next era of connected commerce. As consumers embrace new technologies and demand experiences that move seamlessly across channels, this report helps business leaders meet them there.

This report focuses on six key trends reshaping the future of commerce. From the rise of agentic commerce, where AI-powered systems anticipate and act on customer intent, to the evolution of point-of-sale (POS) technologies that extend beyond the countertop, and the expansion of embedded payments that make every interaction frictionless—these shifts are defining the next competitive edge.

CX leaders are entering a new AI-powered era. Agentic AI is redefining how success is measured and how fast results can be realized. This informative guide shows how to modernize your strategy and accelerate performance ahead of your competition. You’ll discover how core CX metrics like CSAT, FCR and CES are evolving, and learn how leading enterprises are leveraging agentic AI to gain deeper insights, enhance customer value, and achieve measurable business impact.

Looking for ways to improve customer experiences? Understanding your shoppers’ payment preferences is central to creating exceptional shopping experiences that foster loyalty and drive growth. Whether shoppers prefer the tactile experience of in-store, the convenience of online shopping or a blend of both, retailers must consider every point of the customer journey. By implementing shopper-centric solutions, retailers can reduce cart abandonment, increase conversion rates and build loyalty.

ChatGPT and Perplexity roll out AI shopping tools that promise smarter product discovery, personalized picks, and quicker paths to purchase. In the last 24 hours, ChatGPT and Perplexity have introduced new AI-driven shopping experiences that aim to deliver more personalized product discovery and guidance. Both experiences are meant to help users find, compare, and purchase products through conversational queries informed by preferences and past behavior.

Google’s newest model brings deeper reasoning, multimodal intelligence and agentic automation—resetting expectations for what AI delivers for CX.

The Arrival of Gemini 3. Google launches its latest update to Gemini, featuring a simultaneous rollout in its platforms and a new agent development app, Antigravity.

Reasoning meets reality. Gemini 3 brings enhanced reasoning capabilities and a 1 million-token context window, enabling sophisticated analysis of complex customer data in single requests.

By harnessing AI and gen AI to create the next best customer experience, front-runners could generate value for customers and themselves through increased conversion, retention, and upselling. Imagine your company had an AI-powered engine that could detect when a customer needs help—before they even realize it. And was able to coordinate and sequence customer touchpoints while personalizing communications to get the right message to the customer in the right way.