Payments News Today, October 28, 2026: PayPal, AI Agents, Stablecoins
Payment processing news for October 28, 2026: PayPal's Q3, AI-agent identity checks, Ripple's OCC charter and what each means for your business.
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On this page 7 sections
- PayPal's Q3 2026 Earnings: Volume up 6%, Revenue up 2%
- Socure Agent Intelligence Targets Orders Placed by AI Agents
- Ripple Gets Final OCC Approval for a National Trust Bank
- ACI Worldwide and Circle Pilot Stablecoin Settlement, Starting in Colombia
- Elavon Plans an SAP Integration for B2B Sellers
- Faster Payments Council Publishes Its Non-Value Messaging Guide
- Payment Processing News to Watch After October 28
Key takeaways
- By our rough math, PayPal earned about 7 basis points less per dollar it processed than a year ago. Work out your own PayPal effective rate now so you can spot any fee change.
- Expect disputes on orders placed by AI agents to work like card-not-present chargebacks. Keep the order evidence, and ask your gateway if it can flag agent sessions.
- A national trust charter puts federal supervision on stablecoin reserves. It doesn't answer questions about converting to dollars, refunds or accounting, so get those answers in writing.
- Ask your bank whether it can receive RTP and FedNow payments, and whether it can send Request for Payment messages with remittance data attached.
Payment processing news for October 28, 2026, comes down to three shifts merchants can use. PayPal is moving more money but earning less on each dollar of it. Tools that check who stands behind an AI shopping agent are starting to ship. And stablecoin settlement keeps moving inside federally supervised banks and the processor platforms businesses already use, instead of around them. The stories below broke late on October 26 and on October 27; yesterday's edition covered the earlier news.
PayPal's Q3 2026 Earnings: Volume up 6%, Revenue up 2%
PayPal reported third-quarter results on October 27. According to Digital Transactions, net revenue rose 2% from a year earlier to $8.58 billion. Total payment volume (TPV, the dollar value of payments PayPal processed) grew 6% to $487.1 billion. Payment transactions rose 7% to about 6.8 billion. Active accounts barely moved, up 0.6% to 440 million.
Revenue missed the $8.71 billion analysts expected, Yahoo Finance reported, which made it PayPal's slowest quarterly revenue growth of the year. U.S. revenue grew 5% while international revenue slipped more than 2%. Transaction margin dollars rose 2% to $3.95 billion; that is PayPal's measure of revenue minus transaction costs and credit losses. Investors still got good news on profit. PayPal raised its full-year adjusted earnings-per-share outlook to about $5.60, up from about $5.38, per TokenPost.
Our Rough Math on What PayPal Earns per Dollar
Sellers should notice the gap between 6% volume growth and 2% revenue growth. Here is an illustrative calculation using only the reported figures.
| Measure | Q3 2026 (reported) | Q3 2025 (implied) |
|---|---|---|
| Net revenue | $8.58 billion | about $8.41 billion |
| Total payment volume | $487.1 billion | about $459.5 billion |
| Revenue per dollar of volume | about 1.76% | about 1.83% |
Assumptions: we worked out the prior-year figures from the rounded growth rates (2% and 6%), so they are approximate. PayPal's revenue also includes items other than transaction fees, so this ratio is not the rate any merchant pays. It only shows direction. By this math, PayPal earned roughly 7 basis points (0.07 percentage points) less per dollar processed than a year ago.
A company in that position has two levers: sell more of its higher-margin products, or raise prices. The coverage we reviewed doesn't mention any seller fee changes, so treat this as something to watch, not something that has happened. The practical step is to know what PayPal costs you today. Divide last month's total PayPal fees by last month's PayPal sales to get your effective rate on each payment method, then compare it with your card processing rate. If you're deciding which wallets to keep at checkout, our guide to choosing digital wallets for your business walks through the trade-offs.
Socure Agent Intelligence Targets Orders Placed by AI Agents
Identity verification company Socure launched Agent Intelligence on October 27. According to Socure's announcement on Business Wire, the suite detects AI agents, scores whether they should be trusted and ties each agent to the verified person or business that authorized it. It comes in three layers with different release dates:
- Agent Detection is generally available now inside Socure's existing Digital Intelligence product.
- Agent TrustScore is open to beta customers.
- Agent Credential is scheduled for general availability in the first quarter of 2027.
The Paypers notes that the credential links agents to verified people or businesses using W3C credentials, a web standard for digitally signed identity claims. Banks are the first audience. Biometric Update reports that Morgan Stanley has begun blocking third-party agents, while JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citi are restricting them.
For online stores and subscription businesses, the question is liability. An agent can place an order or change a plan, and the cardholder can later say they never approved it. Dispute and liability rules for purchases started by agents are still taking shape. Until they settle, plan on handling that "I didn't authorize this" dispute like any other card-not-present chargeback, which you win with evidence.
Keep order logs, IP and device data, delivery confirmation, and any record of how the customer set up the agent. Turning on cardholder authentication such as 3-D Secure for online card payments adds a verification step at checkout. Any agent orders that end in disputes will still count toward your chargeback ratio and its warning thresholds.
A small store won't buy Socure this quarter. The launch shows what gateways and fraud tools will soon be asked to support, so ask your provider whether it can flag agent sessions today.
Ripple Gets Final OCC Approval for a National Trust Bank
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) granted final approval on October 26 for Ripple National Trust Bank, Ripple announced. This completes a process that started with conditional approval in December 2025. Crypto Briefing reports that under its approved business plan, the trust bank will:
- manage the segregated reserves backing Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin
- act as collateral trustee for token holders
- provide fiduciary digital asset custody
RLUSD itself will still be issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, a Ripple subsidiary regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services.
One point is easy to misread. A national trust bank is not a bank where you would deposit your daily sales. KuCoin News notes that the charter does not permit conventional retail banking such as consumer lending or traditional deposit services. What it adds is direct federal supervision over how the stablecoin's reserves are held.
That matters if a provider offers to let you accept or settle in stablecoins. Before signing, get written answers to five questions:
- Who issues the stablecoin, and which regulator supervises the issuer?
- Who holds the reserves, and how often does an outside firm attest to them?
- When and how does the stablecoin convert to dollars in your business bank account, and who pays the conversion cost?
- How do refunds work, given that stablecoin transfers don't come with card-network chargeback rules?
- How will each payment show up in your accounting records?
A federal charter is a good answer to the first two questions. It doesn't answer the last three. For how crypto spending reaches card checkouts today, see our breakdown of Visa and Mesh crypto spending at the checkout.
ACI Worldwide and Circle Pilot Stablecoin Settlement, Starting in Colombia
On October 27, ACI Worldwide and Circle announced they will show how stablecoin settlement can run inside the banking and payment systems institutions already operate. Decrypt reports that the work pairs Circle's USDC with ACI Connetic, ACI's cloud-based payments orchestration platform. The first deployment is in Colombia, where ACI built the core infrastructure for Bre-B, the country's real-time payments system. The companies say USDC will add to that system rather than replace it.
This is a Latin American bank pilot. U.S. merchants can't use it to settle sales. What matters is the model: stablecoin settlement delivered through the platforms banks and processors already run, not through a separate crypto app a merchant has to manage. If stablecoins reach U.S. merchant deposits at scale, the pilot suggests they will arrive as a settlement choice from your existing processor. U.S. businesses that sell into Latin America today should stick with proven international payment processing and settlement options and keep an eye on pilots like this one.
Elavon Plans an SAP Integration for B2B Sellers
Elavon, a U.S. Bank subsidiary, announced on October 26 that it plans to embed its payment services in SAP's Digital Payments Add-On and Open Payment Framework applications, according to the company's release on Yahoo Finance. Elavon also joined the SAP PartnerEdge program, and the companies plan to extend the integration to other SAP products over time, PYMNTS reports. No launch date was given.
This one is aimed at mid-size and enterprise businesses that run their finance and commerce on SAP. The idea works at smaller scale too. When payments flow straight into the system that holds your invoices, matching deposits to sales takes less manual work. Smaller businesses can get the same benefit by connecting their processor to their books, for example through a QuickBooks payments integration. A monthly routine to reconcile card deposits against sales helps as well.
Faster Payments Council Publishes Its Non-Value Messaging Guide
The U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC) published Operational Considerations for Non-Value Messages, a guide for financial institutions written by its Operational Considerations Work Group, Finextra reports. The FPC promoted the guide on October 23, and The Paypers covered it October 27. Non-value messages don't move money. They carry the information around a payment: requests to pay, requests to return funds, transaction details and payment status.
According to The Paypers, the guide covers these message types:
- Request for Payment
- Request for Return of Funds
- Request for Information
- remittance messages
- administrative system messages
It also explains how the RTP network and the FedNow Service differ. This is industry guidance for banks, not a rule that binds merchants.
Request for Payment is the part merchants should watch. A business sends a bill through the customer's bank on an instant payment rail, and the customer approves it to pay. For contractors, B2B suppliers and anyone who sends invoices, that could mean money arrives faster, with remittance details attached that make matching easier. One difference from cards is how refunds work. On these rails, a refund starts as a request to return funds, which the guide treats as its own message type. Ask your bank three things:
- Can it receive RTP and FedNow payments?
- Can it send Request for Payment messages?
- Does remittance data arrive with each payment?
Payment Processing News to Watch After October 28
Digital Transactions also ran an October 27 story headlined "After a Court Ruling the Durbin Debit Cap Is Poised for a Rewrite." The Durbin debit cap limits the interchange large issuers can charge on debit transactions, so a rewrite would change what many merchants pay on debit cards. Details are still emerging. Confirm current terms with your processor before planning around any change. This roundup is general information, not legal or regulatory advice, so check developments like this with a qualified professional.
This week's job is simpler. Pull your last three processing statements and your PayPal fee reports, and work out the effective rate for each. Then ask your provider where it stands on agent detection, 3-D Secure and instant payments. If you want a second set of eyes on those numbers, request a free processing quote from MannyPay and a specialist will respond within one business day.
Sources
- PayPal Revenue up 2% and Other Digital Transactions News Briefs From 10/27/26 (Digital Transactions)
- PayPal Reports Slowest Quarterly Net Revenue Growth This Year, Raises Earnings Guidance (Yahoo Finance)
- PayPal Raises 2026 Non-GAAP EPS Outlook as Q3 Non-GAAP EPS Beats (TokenPost)
- Socure Launches Agent Intelligence to Bind Every Agent to the Verified Human Behind It (Business Wire)
- Socure Launches Agent Intelligence to Tie AI Agents to Verified Humans (The Paypers)
- Socure Launches Agent Intelligence to Verify Who's Behind AI Agents (Biometric Update)
- Ripple Receives Final OCC Approval to Establish National Trust Bank (Ripple press release)
- Ripple Secures Final OCC Approval for National Trust Bank to Support RLUSD and Crypto Custody (Crypto Briefing)
- Ripple Granted Final Approval to Establish a National Trust Bank in the U.S. (KuCoin News)
- Circle Pushes Deeper Into Latin America With USDC Settlement in Colombia (Decrypt)
- Elavon to Deliver Seamless Embedded Payments Across SAP Applications (Business Wire via Yahoo Finance)
- Elavon Readies B2B Push With Embedded Payments for SAP Solutions (PYMNTS)
- US Faster Payments Council Release Guide on Navigating Non-Value Messaging for Instant Payments (Finextra)
- US Faster Payments Council Publishes Guide on Non-Value Messaging (The Paypers)
This article is for general educational purposes and is not legal, tax or financial advice. Card network rules and state laws change; confirm current requirements for your business.
