2026 FinTech Predictions: Insights from Pat Bermingham of Adflex

I spoke with Pat, CEO of Adflex, a company simplifying business payments by making them straightforward and fast, reducing costs and speeding up payment flows.

Pat shares his perspective on the transformative shifts coming to financial services in 2026, from digital identity rollouts to the long-overdue evolution of B2B payment experiences.

Over to you Pat - my questions are in bold:

What's the biggest shift you expect across financial services in 2026?

The rollout of digital identities across the EU in 2026 will transform how the financial services sector operates, especially in relation to payments and onboarding. The UK has announced plans to launch its own version by 2028.

Interoperable digital identities will significantly enhance security in financial services, because they're much harder to steal, forge or alter compared to existing authentication tools like passports or online banking credentials. Digital identities are also much easier to integrate into payment systems than their physical counterparts.

The impact across financial services will be significant, strengthening certainty and trust. Digital identities offer an efficient, user-friendly way to authenticate payees quickly, so they can transact securely. It will enable suppliers to instantly validate that a real person, from a real company, has the authority to approve or release funds, significantly speeding up payment authorisation cycles. Digital identities will also streamline and fortify the onboarding process for consumers and businesses alike, ensuring every business relationship is underpinned by verifiable, trusted identity.

Which emerging technology will have the most practical impact on banks and the FinTechs that support them?

ISO 20022 will have an undeniable practical impact on banks and fintechs in 2026; it is now mandatory for most cross-border and high-value payments.

The open standard underpins real-time, international payment systems, supporting smoother integrations between domestic and cross-border payment rails. By mandating richer and more structured data fields, ISO 20022 enables invoices, purchase orders and remittance information to travel seamlessly, in a common financial language. For businesses – specifically those with global operations – this means faster settlement, fewer disputes and more predictable cash flow.

Enhanced standardisation also opens the floodgates for more automation opportunities that could completely change the makeup of the B2B payments landscape. Think straight-through processing (STP) but on steroids.

What customer behaviours or expectations will most challenge banks and financial service providers?

Over the last decade, choice, ease, convenience and speed have driven innovation in financial services. In B2C, evidence of innovation is clear, whether it's the meteoric rise of contactless payments, digital wallets or Buy Now Pay Later. The B2B payment space, however, has been slower to evolve, with manual, clunky, one-size-fits-all payment offers persisting.

2026 will be the year that B2B buyers finally say "enough". They will start expecting the same user experience offered in B2C transactions, but for B2B payments. Recognising this, suppliers will put more pressure on their banks and financial service providers to offer B2B-specific experiences that meet the enhanced expectations of their customers. This could be virtual cards, instant payments, Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs), PayPal-style wallets, or account-to-account (A2A) transfers.

Banks and financial service providers must embrace rapid digitalisation, lest they lose business to more nimble competitors.

What risks or blind spots do you think the industry is underestimating as we move into 2026?

Has there ever been a more hyped technology than AI? The explosion of generative tools like ChatGPT, swiftly followed by seemingly every business rebranding as an AI expert overnight, has inevitably raised questions of a bubble ripe for bursting.

While AI will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in the future of financial services, as an industry we should not rush to 'hand over the keys' to critical business operations too soon.

One of the most exciting AI use cases for the business payment space would see AI being used in the back end of processing to enable 'payment auctions'. These auctions would have acquirers competing to process transactions. Transactions would be 'won' by offering lower interchange, faster speed, or more advanced fraud checks, for example. The whole auction process would happen in just milliseconds and would create a business environment that is dynamic and highly competitive.

Agentic commerce attracts headlines and certainly has transformational potential, but several foundational elements must be put in place first. This includes clear liability and governance frameworks, robust agent identity and authentication standards, and payment-grade security and fraud controls capable of handling autonomous decision-making.

Equally critical is regulatory clarity and full auditability and explainability of agent decisions. These guardrails must all be implemented ahead of adoption to ensure the potential risks of AI are mitigated.

If you were advising a bank's leadership team today, what strategic priority should they focus on to stay competitive in 2026 and beyond?

There is no singular 'silver bullet' that will ensure a bank can stay competitive in 2026 and beyond. Instead, banks should critically analyse their current operations and services to identify opportunities in the business that are ripe for growth and modernisation.

Faced with rising costs, a growing compliance burden and limited working capital, financial services organisations are increasingly turning to modern, digital business payment technologies. One of the key B2B technologies is straight-through processing (STP), which automates the use of commercial cards – including purchase cards (Pcards), virtual cards and lodged cards. A commercial card system supported by STP unlocks several benefits for the business, including:

• Built-in working capital (extending lines of credit and supporting more flexible cash flow management)
• Data-rich transactions (providing Level 3 data for reconciliation and enabling lower interchange)
• Automation-ready infrastructure (enabling faster, API-driven settlement)
• Compliance and transparency benefits (facilitating audits, tokenisation and stronger security)

With these benefits in mind, it is no wonder analysts predict huge growth in the B2B payment market, with transactions expected to exceed $224 trillion in value globally by 2030 – an increase of 20% from 2025.

Banks must act now to modernise their business payment infrastructure to support increased adoption of digital payment systems. In the short-term, banks that do so will unlock multiple value-add opportunities for themselves and their customers.

In the long-term, investing in modernisation also lays the foundation for future innovations, such as AI-driven transaction optimisation, dynamic risk management or more intelligent working capital solutions, thereby future-proofing critical economic infrastructure.

Thank you Pat! You can connect with Pat on their LinkedIn Profile and find out more about the company at www.adflex.co.uk.