INTRO On March 31, 2026, Cartes Bancaires brought together the French payment ecosystem at the Carrousel du Louvre for the third CB Summit. We were there, as an exhibitor and omnichannel payment player committed to the major debates shaping our industry. In this article, we look back at two conferences we attended and a few demonstrations that caught our attention, among the many topics that animated the day.

A must-attend event

3,000 expected visitors, 80 stands, 8 conferences, the CB Innovation Awards. The CB Summit 2026 confirmed what the first two editions had sketched out: this event has become a landmark moment for the French card payment ecosystem. An opportunity to exchange with peers, learn and grow together, and align our visions on the future of payment in France and Europe.

The 2026 edition had a particular tone. In his opening address, Emmanuel Macron delivered a video message to participants. His message was direct: payment is “the last mile of economic sovereignty”. According to him, “giving up control over payments would mean accepting that the heart of our transactions depends on players who are not necessarily aligned with us, who do not necessarily share the same interests.” A strong statement, in a geopolitical context that is reshuffling the cards of technological and financial dependencies.

Three themes dominated the exchanges this year: sovereignty, resilience and innovation. Topics at the heart of concerns for all players in the chain, from institutions to merchants.

Sovereignty and resilience: payment on the front line

The conference bringing together CB, Banque de France, STET, Wero and the Fondation Concorde raised a central question: how can we guarantee the continuity and independence of payments in a world traversed by geopolitical and digital crises?

CB first outlined its dynamic. The French scheme now handles 80% of card transactions in France and aims for 90%, with a target of 100 million co-badged cards by 2030, compared to around 75 million today. Mobile payments via Apple Pay and Google Pay have doubled thanks to CB integration by all French banks, and 2026 marks the onboarding of Samsung Pay, with Wero Pay soon to follow. More than 30 players are currently awaiting CB membership. The geopolitical context is clearly driving a refocus on sovereign solutions: paying with CB is a civic act that the groupement now fully embraces, with its “Paye in France” campaigns launched to the general public.

On the Banque de France side, the robustness of the ecosystem is presented as a national priority. The digitalisation of the economy has reduced cash usage, from 65% of transactions in 2013 to 43% in 2024, while opening the door to new entrants. In response, the Banque de France actively supports initiatives that drive towards controlled fraud and greater sovereignty of infrastructures, notably CB and Wero. Encouraging results: fraud has been divided by four in five years, primarily on online payments. It nevertheless remains at 40% human manipulation fraud, and is on the rise. Next regulatory steps: the sharing of suspicious IBANs between banks, effective from May 7, 2026, and the expected reinforcements with PSD3.

STET highlighted the reality of cyber threats, now almost daily on payment infrastructures. CB and STET position themselves as guarantors of payment resilience against these growing attacks, all the more critical given that the April 2025 “blackout” in the Iberian Peninsula demonstrated what a major failure of payment systems means at the scale of an entire country.

Wero now counts 52 million users in Germany, Belgium and France, with 47 members, some of whom had initially refused to join the initiative. The goal is to cover all use cases up to invoice payments, at a European scale. As summarised by Martina Weimert, CEO of EPI: “We do not have time to wait for the ECB’s digital euro to strengthen European sovereignty. Wero has the vocation and the capacity to reach 100% of the European population.”

Digital euro, for its part, occupied an important place in the debates. Its timeline has been pushed back to 2029. The road is long and European consensus difficult to build. Emmanuel Macron sees it as “a historic opportunity to strengthen our monetary sovereignty, to complement our infrastructures in a coherent, resilient and fully European architecture.” A transactional tool, integrable into existing wallets such as Wero or CB, designed to preserve user confidentiality and freedom, provided the entire ecosystem plays along.

Agentic payment: tomorrow’s commerce is being built today

Another conference we attended that day focused on a profound shift in the purchasing journey: the emergence of agentic payment. Tomorrow, it will no longer be humans carrying out certain purchases, but AI agents acting on their behalf. This paradigm shift raises fundamental questions for the entire chain: how does a brand maintain contact with its customer? How do you integrate payment into these new journeys? How do you secure transactions initiated by a machine?

Two AI models are emerging for merchants. On one side, brand AI, specific to a retailer, controlled but limited to its perimeter. On the other, large language models (LLMs), more universal but harder to control on questions of security, responsibility and trust. 15% of consumers already say they are ready to give a payment mandate to an AI agent.

Use cases are taking shape in stages. The first, most immediate step involves letting the agent finalise an online transaction once products have been selected by the human. The second step goes further: the agent acts alone, without human intervention, managing recurring purchases, automatically topping up a school canteen card when the balance runs low, renewing a transport subscription before it expires, or queuing and securing your concert ticket for you! Finally, the third identified step, more complex, sees the agent orchestrate complete multi-purchase journeys, like a marketplace: organising a trip from A to Z by booking flights, hotels and rental cars, or preparing an event by managing suppliers, shopping and logistics. At each stage, the same questions arise: who chooses the payment method? Who bears responsibility for the purchase? How are returns and refunds handled?

Security remains the central challenge: strong authentication, adapted KYC, and the emergence of a new concept “Know Your Agent” (KYA) to certify AI agents authorised to make payments. On this topic as on others, the conclusion was shared: Europe has everything to gain by building common standards, federating its players around collective projects, to retain control over its innovations and shape the global rules of the game.

CB innovations: reinventing the payment experience

On the sidelines of the conferences, CB presented several demonstrations illustrating ongoing projects, particularly around accessibility and merchant payment terminal security.

The biometric card, developed with Thales, allows contactless payment validation regardless of the amount, simply by placing a finger on a sensor integrated into the card. No more PIN entry needed, whatever the amount.
The voice card pairs with the phone to announce the transaction amount and confirm the PIN. For visually impaired people, this is an important reassurance: without it, they have to trust the merchant for the displayed amount.
The dynamic cryptogram strengthens online payment security by automatically changing the code on the back of the card, with the option to force an update via an app.

On the new use cases side: solutions for autonomous stores with pre-authorisation at entry and incremental payment at exit, and Click to Pay, the frictionless wallet co-carried by Visa, Mastercard, Amex and other international payment schemes.

What this says about our role

What the CB Summit 2026 confirms is that the issues structuring our sector are no longer purely technical. They are strategic. Infrastructure sovereignty, payment resilience in the face of crises, inclusion, fraud control, adaptation to new purchasing journeys: these topics define what it means to be a responsible payment player today.

At Nepting, they resonate directly with the way we have built our omnichannel payment platform. Our data is hosted in France. Our architecture has been designed from its foundations to be resilient, with service continuity mechanisms that meet DORA requirements and CB certification standards. Our collaboration with CB goes beyond certification: it is part of a shared commitment to meet the highest security requirements in the French market. A commitment we had already discussed last year at the CB Summit 2025, in a roundtable dedicated to payment resilience. Watch the replay here.

And our open model, freedom of acquirer, terminal and scheme, with no lock-in, is precisely what the market demands in a context where dependence on a single player has become a risk no one can afford to ignore.

See you in 2027 for the next edition. In the meantime, our teams are available to discuss your payment challenges. Contact us

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