How payments infrastructure is becoming a strategic asset

The payments industry has long operated on false dichotomies—scale or agility, proven or innovative, fast or safe. Marqeta CEO Mike Milotich recently joined Alex Johnson on the Fintech Takes podcast to discuss why the “either/or” mentality is dissolving across a few key areas in payments, and how Marqeta is enabling payment possibilities for customers across many industries and use cases. 

Modern payment experiences are designed so consumers never think about the payment itself, yet this simplicity hides enormous back-end complexity. "The more seamless and almost invisible payments become on the front end, the more complicated it becomes on the back end," Milotich explains. Marqeta provides the payment building blocks that our customers can put together in unique ways to deliver value to their users, whether through creating new revenue streams, deepening engagement, or improving access to capital. Our primary objective is to provide our customers with more control and agility in issuing payment credentials. 

As we’re seeing in the headlines, the payments industry is beginning to explore agentic commerce: AI agents conducting transactions on behalf of users. While the underlying infrastructure exists today, 2026 will likely be the year of experimentation and identifying meaningful use cases where the value justifies the investment.

To understand how AI agents will spend on a user's behalf, corporate expense management is a great example since it already governs delegated spending at scale. Marqeta's Model Context Protocol (MCP) server gives AI agents an accessible way to interact with issuing functions: create credentials, configure constraints, complete purchases, or initiate disputes. "An AI agent could create and configure a card with very specific instructions from that user in terms of what it wants to go purchase," Milotich explains. Depending on trust level, credentials take different structures—broad permissions when trust is high, single-purpose virtual cards when trust must be narrowly constrained. 

According to Marqeta's 2025 State of Payments report, BNPL usage has expanded beyond large, discretionary purchases to include everyday spending like groceries and routine purchases. Milotich noted that Marqeta is seeing a shift in how people are using BNPL, and it’s “becoming a much more broadly used case. People are using it much more thoughtfully as a cash flow management tool." Consumers are turning to BNPL to help them strategize their spending, regardless of category. 

In addition, BNPL is moving from checkout options to card features themselves. With Marqeta and Visa Flexible Credential, Affirm and Klarna now issue debit cards that let users elect installments anywhere the network is accepted. Milotich noted this effectively unlocks tens of millions of merchants at once, enabling cardholders to choose how and when they pay. 

The competitive focus in payments is shifting from rewards and rates to payment choice and flexibility. As Milotich emphasizes, "You don't have to make that trade-off or sacrifice like you've had to make in the past. We can maintain a highly flexible and nimble platform that is also delivered at scale." Those who win will see payments as strategic infrastructure that enables scale, flexibility, and new AI-powered, user-driven experiences.

To listen to the full podcast episode, click here.