MAG Insights

A message from the CEO as the 2027 renewal cycle opens

As renewal notices land in your inbox, I will try to use this article to be direct with you about one question: what will MAG do for your business in the year ahead that you couldn’t do on your own? This year, I’ll walk through five things: how our growing membership is building a larger, more useful peer network; the new global membership option we’re launching for merchants with a global presence and for those operating outside the U.S.; where our AI work is heading as the rules for agentic commerce are being written; how we continue to put the merchant perspective in front of regulators and legislators; and the expanded slate of conferences, meet-ups, and education on the 2027 calendar. I’ll also highlight some of what we have delivered in 2026 that sets up this next chapter.

A Bigger Table: Why Membership Growth Matters to You

MAG enters this renewal cycle with roughly 225 merchant members, and our goal is to keep growing that number through 2027. The organization’s value relies on its membership. When a fraud director at a grocery chain, a payments lead at a specialty retailer, and a treasury manager at a services company are all in the same meeting comparing notes on chargeback rates, alternative payments, or a card network’s latest specification updates, everyone in that room gets smarter faster than they would reading the same information alone. That’s the whole premise of a merchant association: pooled experience beats isolated experience, every time.

As we grow, that pooling effect intensifies. More members mean more verticals and more regional perspectives on acceptance, fraud, and regulatory decisions. When MAG goes to a card network, a regulator, or a standards body, the weight our voice carries depends on the breadth of merchants behind it. Every renewal and every new member strengthen our argument and increases the likelihood that someone in our community has already solved the exact problem in front of you this quarter.

Going Global: A Seat at the Table, Everywhere You Operate

The payments landscape in the EU, UK, and APAC markets is moving fast, with distinct interchange regimes, open banking mandates, fraud liability rules, and entirely different regulatory bodies. Most merchants don’t have the budget or bandwidth to cover these complex and evolving markets on their own.

MAG’s global membership aims to transform merchants’ ability to engage internationally, giving you a genuine presence and voice in the conversations shaping payments outside of the U.S. Similar to MAG’s longstanding domestic benefits, it provides access to international programs, offering a channel for MAG to advocate for merchant interests to regulators and industry bodies abroad.

Global membership is available at an additional $750 incremental cost to your existing U.S. membership, a deliberately modest add-on given the scope of what it gives you access to. A regional membership option is also available for members who want a lighter touch to engage with a specific market. Contact partnerships@merchantadvisorygroup.org for details.

AI Is Moving Fast; MAG Is Making Sure Merchants Have a Seat

AI is changing payments faster than almost anything else in our industry’s recent history, and MAG is involved in multiple efforts to share merchants’ point of view. Agentic commerce is the clearest example. It raises questions that go to the heart of what merchants care about: how authorization and fraud liability get allocated when the “cardholder” is technically a piece of software, and who’s accountable when a disputed transaction needs to be untangled. Early data on agent-initiated payments shows authorization performance well below what merchants are used to with normal card-not-present transactions, a real, current gap with direct cost implications for anyone accepting these transactions today.

That’s the kind of gap MAG works to close. We formed a dedicated Agentic Commerce Working Group made up of member merchants with relevant AI, payments, and eCommerce expertise. This group is responsible for developing best practices focused on payment authorization and dispute liability. They also advocate for security, transparency, and fair access as these systems evolve, rather than leaving standards-setting solely to the platforms building the agents. The group’s outputs are meant to become real deliverables for members: best practice guides, education sessions, and policy positions.

We’re also putting merchant representation where technical payments standards are written. In 2027, MAG is expanding its participation across the standards bodies shaping this environment. In addition to our ongoing engagement with EMVCo, X9, and W3C, the MAG has also joined the x402 Foundation, which stewards the x402 protocol that embeds secure payment capabilities directly into web interactions so that AI agents, APIs, and applications can send and receive payments seamlessly. MAG’s job is to be in the room as the merchants’ voice, and this builds directly on research MAG has done this year to separate hype from reality in agentic commerce, and what it means for your authorization rates and liability exposure.

Making Sure Merchants Have a Voice in Washington and Beyond

Advocacy is the part of MAG’s work that’s hardest to see day-to-day and probably the most consequential over time. Laws and Rules are written during comment periods and legislative sessions long before they show up in your cost of acceptance, and the merchant perspective should be included in policy conversations.

This year, MAG joined an amicus brief alongside the Retail Litigation Center, NACS, and other merchant advocates regarding the Corner Post and Linney’s Pizza debit interchange litigation, arguing that current interchange rules allow issuers to recover costs Congress never authorized, a direct driver of the debit fees merchants pay on every transaction. MAG’s consistent engagement on this longstanding issue has given merchants a voice at every step: with Congress, the Federal Reserve, and now the courts.

More broadly, our advocacy runs on a steady cadence rather than only showing up when there’s a headline fight. Our Advocacy and Communications Committee meets regularly to set and refresh priorities with input from members and industry advisors, and we stay engaged on the issues most likely to affect your acceptance costs and operations: debit routing and interchange, the ongoing card network settlement and rule changes, EBT/SNAP chip migration requirements, the Federal Reserve’s proposals affecting account access and check services, and the broader open banking conversation both here and in markets like the UK. When merchant priorities align with an active regulatory or Congressional proceeding, we file comment letters that put the merchant argument on the record, and as our global footprint grows, we’re extending that same approach abroad.

None of this works if merchants aren’t the ones setting the priorities. Every position MAG takes starts with what we’re hearing from members like you.

More Ways to Connect and Learn: The 2027 Calendar

If 2026 taught us anything, it’s that the conversations between merchants in person, in a hallway between sessions or over dinner at a local meet-up, are often worth more than any single presentation. That’s why we have built our 2027 calendar to give you more of those moments, not fewer.

Our two flagship conferences anchor the year, and both dates are confirmed: Payments MAGnified in Dallas, February 22-25, 2027, and the MAG Payments Conference in Orlando, September 19-22, 2027. Details for both are on the MAG website.

Beyond these conferences, we’re expanding local and regional touchpoints throughout the year with meet-ups planned across the U.S., Europe, and APAC. Watch your inbox and the MAG calendar for details.

Take advantage of MAG’s current education offerings, now spanning both self-paced online courses and live webinars, giving you and your team a flexible way to build payments knowledge on your own schedule, year-round and not just during conference season.

What MAG Delivered in 2026

Before I close, I want to recognize some of what the team accomplished this year, because it’s the foundation the 2027 plan is built on.

We advanced our chargeback modernization work with focused research into the frictions costing merchants the most time and money: long, inconsistent dispute cycles; evidence burdens that fall disproportionately on merchants; incomplete issuer-side information; and the rising tide of friendly fraud. That research fed directly into a cross-functional working group now developing practical solutions, and it continues into 2027 as an active modernization effort.

We also did the work necessary to provide merchants a foundation on the state of agentic commerce and establish a common merchant position on the governance of agentic commerce. This provided our Board and our members a clear view of where AI-driven purchasing is gaining traction versus early testing phases. It included an honest assessment of key issues like authorization, liability, and dispute questions. This work was the focus of the Agentic Commerce Working Group and guided our expanded standards participation described above.

Additionally, we put merchant advocacy into action by joining amicus efforts, standing alongside other merchant advocates to challenge a rule that affects what you pay on every debit transaction.

The Bottom Line

Renewal decisions are always a question of whether an organization is worth what it costs. My answer for 2027 is that MAG is positioned to deliver more direct value to you than ever: a larger and more useful peer network, a genuine voice in global payments conversations at a modest incremental cost, a real seat at the table as AI reshapes how purchases happen, a consistent and active voice representing merchants to the people writing the laws and rules, and more ways to learn and connect with people facing the exact same challenges you are.

I’m glad to have you as a member, and I hope you’ll renew and be part of what we build together in 2027. Reach out if you have questions about any of what’s above.