In this global market analysis, payments expert Vladyslav Kolodistyi maps how six regional real-time A2A rails (FedNow, SEPA Instant, Faster Payments, PIX, UPI, NPP/PayTo) are reshaping cross-border Pay by Bank payments and the competitive position of the global card networks in 2026.
The six regional real-time A2A rails powering the global Pay by Bank takeover in 2026. Map of regional infrastructure by Vladyslav Kolodistyi.
For the first time in fifty years, the global card networks face a credible Pay by Bank infrastructure challenge across multiple major economies simultaneously. The challenge is not a new card network. The challenge is a coordinated rise of real-time account-to-account payments rails in every major payment market: FedNow and RTP in the United States, SEPA Instant in the European Union, Faster Payments in the United Kingdom, PIX in Brazil, UPI in India, NPP and PayTo in Australia. Each of these A2A payments rails is now operating at production scale. Together, they are reshaping where global payment volume flows, and the card networks no longer hold the structural advantage over Pay by Bank that they enjoyed for two generations.
Having worked in payments infrastructure across multiple regions, I have watched this transition accelerate in 2025 and 2026. The interesting part is not that real-time A2A payments rails exist. The interesting part is that they now exist in every major economy at once, each one mature enough for serious cross-border Pay by Bank commerce. The cards-versus-Pay by Bank debate used to be a regional story (PIX in Brazil, UPI in India, niche European Open Banking volume). In 2026 it is a global story, and the global cards networks are competing against a coordinated rise of real-time A2A infrastructure they cannot replicate.
Vladyslav Kolodistyi’s take: The cards networks have not faced this kind of infrastructure competition since the original launch of Visa and Mastercard. Real-time A2A and Pay by Bank rails are not a niche payment method anymore. They are a parallel global payments infrastructure operating at production scale.
Vladyslav Kolodistyi on the Six Real-Time Rails That Define Global A2A Payments in 2026
Each of the six major real-time A2A payments rails has its own scale, its own design, and its own regulatory context. The PIX Pay by Bank rail in Brazil now processes more than 5 billion transactions per month, more than card networks process in the same market, with consumer fees at zero and merchant fees around 0.1% MDR. India's UPI is the largest A2A payments rail in the world by transaction count, processing over 14 billion transactions per month at zero MDR for low-value flows. The combination of free consumer experience and minimal merchant cost made these two Pay by Bank rails dominant in their home markets faster than any payments practitioner predicted.
In the developed economies, the picture looks different but the direction is the same. The UK Faster Payments rail processes 31 million Open Banking payments per month with 60.5% of UK adults using Open Banking, according to SQ Magazine's 2026 Open Banking adoption analysis. SEPA Instant in the EU is now mandated at parity pricing with standard SEPA under the Instant Payments Regulation, meaning real-time A2A and Pay by Bank payments no longer carry a premium over slower bank transfers. FedNow and RTP in the US have crossed $1.2 trillion in processed payments value in 2025, and the CFPB's Section 1033 rule taking effect in April 2026 (per Digital API's 2026 Open Banking trends report) opens the regulatory door to mainstream Pay by Bank adoption in the world's largest economy. Australia's NPP and PayTo combination delivers VRP-style recurring billing natively, the closest international peer to UK Commercial VRPs.
Vladyslav Kolodistyi notes that the global rails picture is not about which rail wins. It is about the fact that every major economy now has a credible real-time A2A and Pay by Bank alternative to cards, which collectively reshapes global payment economics. A merchant operating in Brazil, the UK, India, and the EU can route domestic payments through local A2A and Open Banking rails and avoid card fees on the largest share of their volume. The card networks still serve cross-border tourist transactions and unbanked consumers, but the share of global payment volume they touch is now structurally smaller than it was even five years ago.
"Every major economy now has a credible real-time Pay by Bank alternative to cards. The card networks still serve tourist transactions and unbanked consumers, but the share of global payment volume they touch is structurally smaller."
By Vladyslav Kolodistyi
Vladyslav Kolodistyi’s take: I tell merchants to think of cards as a layer in their payment stack, not the foundation of it. The foundation in 2026 is the local A2A and Open Banking rail of each market they operate in. Cards sit on top for the corridors where Pay by Bank does not work.
Cross-Border Payments: Where Open Banking Payments Win and Where Cards Still Hold the Niche
The cross-border picture in 2026 has six common corridors that almost every global merchant encounters. The economics of cards versus local A2A rails differ dramatically across these corridors. The chart below maps the comparison: cost, approval rate, and settlement time for both payment methods in each corridor. The result is consistent. A2A and Pay by Bank win five out of six corridors decisively. Cards retain one important niche: tourist or expat transactions where the buyer does not have a local bank account to authenticate against the merchant's A2A payments rail.
Cross-border payment corridor comparison. Cards versus local A2A rails across six common scenarios. A2A wins five, cards win one. Analysis by Vladyslav Kolodistyi.
Look at the UK SME to German supplier corridor as a representative example. A £15,000 invoice paid via card costs the merchant £300 to £450 in processing fees, faces 60-75% approval rates due to high-value flags, and settles between T+2 and T+5. The same invoice paid via A2A and Pay by Bank rails (UK Faster Payments out, SEPA Instant in, with FX handled by an Open Banking layer) costs around £1.50 fixed, sees 99%+ approval rates, and settles in seconds. The card path is not just more expensive in absolute terms. It is structurally worse across every dimension that matters to a finance team, and the cost compounds with every transaction.
The one corridor where cards still win is the unbanked or non-local-banked consumer. A European tourist buying from a US merchant has no UK Faster Payments account to push from. The merchant's SEPA Instant integration cannot authenticate against the tourist's home bank if that bank does not participate. Cards retain this niche because they are the universal fall-back when local A2A and Open Banking rails do not span the buyer's banking relationship. For most merchants, this corridor is a small share of total volume but a non-zero share, which is why the smart 2026 payment strategy is to offer both Pay by Bank and cards, not to replace one with the other.
Vladyslav Kolodistyi’s take: The right 2026 payment stack is not Pay by Bank only. It is Pay by Bank first, cards as fall-back for the corridors Open Banking payments cannot span. That asymmetric design captures the margin benefits while protecting the rare niche where cards still win.
Merchants who structure their payment routing around this hierarchy in 2026 are seeing meaningful margin recovery, faster settlement, and dramatically lower chargeback exposure. Merchants who keep cards as the default and treat A2A payments as an afterthought continue to absorb costs that competitors are eliminating. The global real-time rails race is no longer about whether Pay by Bank is viable. It is about how fast each merchant can restructure their payment stack to capture the savings that the rails make available.
I write about global A2A payment rails, cross-border payment infrastructure, and the cards-versus-Pay by Bank competitive dynamics regularly. Follow Vladyslav Kolodistyi on LinkedIn for the next global payments analysis.
"The global real-time rails race is no longer about whether Pay by Bank is viable. It is about how fast each merchant restructures their payment stack to capture the savings."
By Vladyslav Kolodistyi
Top comments (1)
Strong mapping of the six rails. One angle that's easy to miss from the macro view: for developers who want to BUILD on the EU side of this (SEPA Instant + PSD2-connected bank APIs), the access layer has a hidden cost barrier that doesn't exist on PIX or UPI.
The article frames this as infrastructure competition, and that's right at the network level. But from a builder's seat, "connect to the bank API" in the EU requires an eIDAS QWAC mutual TLS certificate for production access — roughly €3,000–8,000/year plus audit overhead, before you write a single integration line. PIX and UPI developers don't face an equivalent certificate gate at the startup level. So while the rails themselves are converging toward real-time A2A, the developer onboarding economics diverge sharply by jurisdiction.
The aggregator layer (Plaid, TrueLayer, GoCardless, Tink, etc.) exists precisely to absorb that certificate burden — but most are priced for enterprise buyers, which creates a gap at the SMB and indie-builder end. The infrastructure race is real, but the question of who can afford to touch it is separate and less discussed.
(Disclosure: I work on open-banking.io, focused on the certificate-free EU bank data access layer for developers. Adjacent to the payment-initiation side this article covers, but the same eIDAS cost structure shapes who gets to build on SEPA Instant.)