Payments Technology

Engagement Payments Technology

Building relationships within the tech community

The MAG offers the payments tech community an opportunity for ongoing networking, learning, and engagement through participation in MAG committees, communities, webinars, and in-person events. Discuss shared challenges such as modernizing payments platforms, optimizing payments processes, combating fraud, and increasing data security. The technology community brings together viewpoints across the top merchants in the country, leading technology providers, and industry experts.

 

Highlights

2026 Q3 Payments Technology Industry Engagement Report

NEW! 2026 Q3 Payments Technology Industry Engagement Report

Position Paper - Agentic Commerce Governance Initiative

Position Paper - Agentic Commerce Governance Initiative

Agentic Commerce Market Intelligence Report

Agentic Commerce Market Intelligence Report

Adopting and Implementing Payment Account Reference (PAR)

Adopting and Implementing Payment Account Reference (PAR)

Payment Account Reference (PAR) is a unique identifier, a 29-character non-financial reference value, associated with the primary account number (PAN)...

Allies and Partnerships

The MAG engages with several organizations that develop, maintain, and influence the standards and specifications that underpin the payments ecosystem. Once published, how they are implemented by different payments stakeholders can have a profound impact on the operations and the regulatory and network compliance of merchants. In this section, we highlight topics that may be of significant interest to merchants.

CURRENT UPDATES

W3C: An international public-interest non-profit organization that develops standards and guidelines to help everyone build a web-based on the principles of accessibility, internationalization, privacy, and security. FIDO: An open industry association with a focused mission: reduce the world’s reliance on passwords.

The W3C Web Authentication (WebAuthn) standard was developed in coordination with the FIDO Alliance and is a core component of the FIDO2 Project along with FIDO’s Client to Authenticator Protocol (CTAP specification).

  • W3C and GS1 (https://www.gs1.org) hosted a workshop on "ECommerce for Humans and AI Agents" in September 2026.  The MAG presented a Position Statement on “Merchant Perspectives on E-commerce for Humans and AI Agents”, which is available on the MLC.  Several of the participants, who were primarily solution providers, expressed the value of having a better understanding of merchant concerns.
  • W3C hosted a virtual session to provide updates from EMVCo and the FIDO Alliance on their digital credential initiatives.  EMVCo shared that they have decided to take the lead in developing the schema for card payment digital credential, initially for authentication use case and exploring payment initiation.  FIDO stressed that the EMVCo and FIDO Alliance initiatives are schema definition companions in the broader Digital Payment Credential effort.
X9: An open body that develops and maintains voluntary consensus standards for the U.S. financial services industry. ISO: A network of national standards bodies that develops and publishes international standards on everything from screw threads to quantum key distribution.

X9 represents the United States on two ISO technical committees related to financial services and their subcommittees.

  • The fall Consensus and Board of Directors meetings will be held October 27-28.
  • Released an informative report on ‘EBT Chip Card Implementation Guidance’ which can be found on the X9 Informative Reports page.  The guidance can assist merchants in implementing support for SNAP chip cards.

USPF: A cross-industry body that enables open exchange of expertise and information to solve problems and help realize innovations that make payments more efficient, simple, and secure. IAF: A cross-industry body dedicated to the development, advancement, and adoption of secure identity technologies, including physical and logical access. ATCF: A cross-industry body focused on building trust, interoperability and governance for the emerging world of AI-driven transactions

These organizations operate within the Secure Technology Alliance, an association that encompasses all aspects of secure digital technologies.

  • The Secure Technology Alliance launched an Agentic Trust and Commerce Forum (ATCF) to shape the future of AI-driven transactions. The MAG is partnering with the new forum to guide the payments industry toward adopting secure-by-design and interoperable agentic commerce experiences.
  • The first ATCF project is to review the EMVCo Agentic Framework, provide constructive industry feedback, and inform its continued development.
  • The fall USPF Member Meeting will be held on November 17-18.
  • The USPF posted the first two LinkedIn articles of an eight-part series based on the previously published Agentic Commerce: A Primer for the Payments Industry whitepaper: What is Agentic Commerce? And Know Your Agent: Building Trust and Accountability in Agentic Commerce.

A global technical body that creates and manages the EMV® Specifications to enable interoperable and secure card-based payments.

 

The Financial Data Exchange (FDX) is a non-profit industry standards body operating in the U.S. and Canada dedicated to unifying the financial services ecosystem around a common, interoperable, and royalty-free technical standard for user-permissioned financial data sharing.
  • Hosted a webinar on ‘Agentic AI and Open Finance: Risks, Opportunities & Industry Readiness’. A recap of the webinar can be found here.

Resources

The following resources are available to MAG members only

Events

Tech Forum

The MAG Tech Forum is aligned with the MAG bi-annual conference, offering education and networking opportunities for payments IT professionals. As payments technology evolves, the MAG Tech Forum connects payments technology experts and leading providers to explore innovative applications of these advancements.

The MAG Tech Forum aims to foster collaboration, provide tech-focused knowledge, and build relationships between merchants, their payments IT and business teams, and technology providers.

 

Tech-focused payment content:

  • Fintech
  • IOT payments
  • Architecture
  • Blockchain
  • Analytics
  • Agile
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Machine learning
  • Gateways
  • Data Science
  • Fraud Mitigation
  • Biometrics
  • Orchestration Layers
  • POS Hardware

Top 5 reasons to attend the Tech Forum

Connect with IT professionals at the Tech Forum and payments professionals at the MAG conference events representing over 200 of the largest U.S. merchants which account for over $4.8 trillion in annual sales across physical and digital commerce.
Create new business connections with Tech Forum and MAG merchant member attendees from every vertical (Digital Goods and Services, Fuel and Convenience, General Retail, Grocery and Restaurant, Mobility and Transportation, Professional Services, Travel and Entertainment).

Sessions are available on current industry topics that your business peers across the retail community are grappling with in their companies. Join the strategic discussions and learn best practices for today’s rapidly changing payments environment.

Access to industry experts who provide the latest insights and innovative uses of new payment technologies twice a year through panel and keynote sessions, as well as within the exhibit halls at in-person events.

Beyond the in-person meetings twice a year, participate in the MAG webinar series, online learning, MAG committees, and Working Groups offered throughout the year. Want to get even more involved? Be a panelist at one of our upcoming events and share your perspective with fellow merchants.

Tech Forum Sponsorship

Tech Forum Sponsorship offers the opportunity to network and engage with the top retailers in the country. Conferences and webinar sessions are designed for IT professionals to provide attendees with the latest insights needed to understand and use new and emerging technologies in payments.

The Tech Forum Executive Advisory Council along with the support of Tech Forum sponsors will influence the payments technology topics relevant to the membership and included in these Tech Forum sessions. The sessions will discuss how these payments technologies can play a role in creating a more frictionless payments experience for consumers as well as supporting merchants delivering value added services as part of overall commerce.

Tech Forum Sponsor Benefits

Present content as a Tech Forum speaker. Presenters will be selected among Tech Forum sponsors with preference granted to Contributing Sponsors.
Increase brand awareness and visibility with key decision makers through speaking opportunities, conference signage and recognition prior and during event.
Extend your visibility with a complimentary exhibit booth.
Connect with IT professionals at the Tech Forum and payments professionals at the MAG conference events representing over 150 of the largest U.S. merchants which account for over $3.4 trillion in annual sales across physical & digital commerce.

Create new business connections with Tech Forum and MAG merchant member attendees from every vertical (eCommerce, Mass Merchant, Petroleum/Convenience Stores and Small Ticket/Restaurant).

Thank you Tech Forum Sponsors

Sponsors

Meet our Tech Forum Sponsors 

Provide the world’s best customer experience every day. Become essential to our customers by providing differentiated products and services to help them achieve their aspirations. We deliver an unparalleled standard of excellence in everything we do, staying focused on the biggest opportunities to be meaningful to our customers. From our innovative products to our world-class customer service, our customers expect the best—and our teams are proud to deliver it.

Products Designed with You in Mind
We provide banking and credit products that help people achieve their goals–from establishing good credit, to paying for a college education to consolidating debt. In payments, our networks connect banks, cardmembers and merchants around the world with innovative commerce solutions.

Decisions in real-time for a seamless customer experience 
Forter's integrated fraud prevention platform combines predictive fraud research and modeling, merchant input, and our global merchant network, so you can focus on growing your business without worry.

From smart terminals to a cloud-based payments platform and end-to-end terminal management, our innovations are designed to help you succeed in the payments acceptance ecosystem.

IXOPay, A TokenEx Company is a cloud tokenization and payment optimization provider committed to helping organizations safely and compliantly process and transmit sensitive data. Its industry-leading solution for data protection can secure and desensitize any structured data element to reduce risk, streamline operations, and enable critical business processes. For more information, visit tokenex.com.
J.P. Morgan provides merchant services that can help clients manage costs, drive sales, better navigate the omnichannel payment landscape, and enhance cash flow and the management of receivables. Simplified payments improve sales conversion rates, lessen shopping-cart abandonment, lead to repeat sales and increase customers loyalty. That means sustained growth and greater market share for you.


Mastercard: Unlocking potential
We reshape the digital economy so everyone — individuals, financial institutions, governments and businesses — can realize their ambitions.

Get there faster
The diverse tech industry cuts across, software vendors, IT services providers, hardware makers, and internet- services providers. At Oliver Wyman we combine deep understanding of technology and business of technologies to serve large and small Tech players select their growth bets and get organized to realize them. We help clients define and build winning technology propositions, optimize operations and pricing, organize commercial teams,  and execute growth strategies. We also help  investors navigate the tech space to identify, acquire, and transform promising assets to realize their full value.

A single unified back-office platform that enables teams to track, manage & account for every transaction ensuring revenue assurance across payments, finance, and accounting operations.

The Safer, Easier Way to Pay.
At PayPal, we put people at the center of everything we do. PayPal is a global service that moves the payment amount from your financial institution to the merchant without sharing your financial information.

At PaytestLab, our mission is to set the industry standard and become the global leader in the field of automated payment testing. We are driven by a passion for innovation and excellence, committed to redefining the way businesses and industries ensure the efficiency and security of their payment systems. By aspiring to set the industry standard, we pledge to be pioneers in our field, continuously pushing the boundaries of what's possible. Our goal is to provide cutting-edge solutions that not only meet current needs but also anticipate future challenges, helping our clients stay ahead of the curve.

The PaytestLab suite of products are designed to enhance and automate testing processes within the EFTPOS terminal industry. We offer versatile solutions to simplify testing procedures and streamline quality assurance efforts. These tools serve as powerful companions for payment testing, enabling efficient transaction flow and reducing the reliance on physical test tools. Whether used on-premises or via a cloud platform, we provide the flexibility to test payment terminals effectively, accommodating both contact and contactless cards to streamline the overall testing process.
Redefining the Customer Journey. Anywhere. Any way. AnyPAY.
The digital future of commerce travels through the sweet spot of our heritage. Personalized, flexible and innovative journeys happen because we provide secure digital connections, cloud-based services, global market insights, best-in-class hardware and standard-setting global and local payment expertise. Verifone is omnipresent in omnichannel – no matter where you are in the world, no matter where you are with your customer journey. We revolutionize commerce. We make it happen. Simply. Everywhere. Consumers want personalized experiences that let them shop where they want, how they want, when they want – on a digital device or in a store. We make it simple for brands to create their customer journeys through software applications we engineer with business needs and consumer lifestyles in mind. We make it possible by connecting merchants to our cloud-based suite of services that delight consumers and unleash business insights – key steps for developing newly imagined customer experiences.

VGS is the world's leader in payment tokenization.  Large banks, aspiring fintechs, and growing merchants embed our universal token vault into their technology stack to manage the complexities of payment data tokenization across processors and networks, open banking, card issuance, omnichannel loyalty, PCI compliance, payment orchestration, and more.  We empower our clients and partners by tokenizing sensitive payment data, limiting compliance scope, and consolidating payments to unlock revenue and business opportunities. 

Everywhere you want to be 
Visa is a global payments technology company working to enable consumers, businesses, banks and governments to use digital currency. Visa connects people every day through innovative payment solutions. Helping improve lives and economies around the world. From advancing financial inclusion to helping in times of crisis, we're using our products, know-how and philanthropy to bring about positive change.

Worldpay from FIS® (NYSE:FIS) payment processing solutions allow businesses to take, make and manage payments seamlessly across channels, geographies and industries. Over 1M+ merchants globally utilize Worldpay, enabling them to accept 300+ payment methods across mobile, online and in-store transactions. Offering industry-leading scale and an unmatched integrated technology platform, Worldpay solutions help businesses unlock new opportunities, manage payment processing more efficiently and deliver an exceptional omni-commerce customer experience. To learn more, visit www.worldpay.com.

Tech Exec Advisors

  • Virender Bhandari
    Hughes Network Systems, LLC
    Advisory Engineer
  • Janeth Falcon
    Circle K
    VP North America Technology
  • Jamie Henry
    Walmart
    Vice President & Assistant Treasurer
  • Sorin Hilgen
    EG America LLC
    CIO
  • Prasuna Kolachina
    Delta Airlines
    Managing Director, IT
  • John Laffoon
    The Home Depot
    Distinguished Engineer - Payments IT
  • Robert Reid
    Canadian Tire
    Director, Payment Processing
  • Jonathan Turboer
    Ford Motor Credit
    Head of Payments, North America
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The Merchant Advisory Group

Driving positive change and innovation in the payments industry serving merchants' interests globally through collaboration, education, and advocacy.