Top Three Sessions for Payments Professionals at MRC Vegas 2026
Payments strategy is evolving quickly—from authorization optimization and orchestration to emerging technologies like agentic commerce and AI-driven routing.
At MRC Vegas 2026, happening 16–19 March, at the ARIA Resort & Casino, payments leaders will find a packed agenda designed to help merchants improve performance, reduce costs, and rethink the role payments play in revenue growth.
Below are three sessions payments professionals should prioritize.
1. Payments Detectives: Shocking Results from an Approval Rate Investigation
18 March • 11:45 AM–12:30 PM
Payments teams often operate on assumptions—about retries, tokenization, routing strategies, and other tactics believed to improve approvals.
This session, featuring leaders from T-Mobile and CMSPI, challenges those assumptions with real data. Payments experts dig into what actually drives authorization success—and where common industry beliefs may be wrong.
What you’ll learn:
- Data-driven insights into what truly impacts approval rates
- New frameworks for evaluating payments performance
- Better questions to ask PSPs, acquirers, and internal stakeholders
Best for: Heads of Payments, payments product teams, authorization optimization leaders, analytics teams
2. Cutting Costs, Not Corners: How Digital Merchants Are Reducing Cost of Payments
18 March • 13:45–14:30
For many merchants, payments remain one of the largest—and least optimized—cost centers.
This fireside chat with Indeed.com, Optimized Payments, and Adyen explores how merchants are reducing processing costs using strategies like least-cost routing, interchange optimization, and checkout personalization—while maintaining conversion and customer experience.
What you’ll learn:
- Practical approaches to reducing transaction costs at scale
- How payment method ordering and routing strategies impact margins
- Ways to connect payments optimization with broader business goals
Best for: Payments leaders, finance and treasury partners, payments operations teams
3. Beyond Single-Provider: How Champion-Challenger Models Drive Enterprise Payments Forward
17 March • 15:45–16:30
More enterprises are moving beyond single-provider payment stacks toward multi-processor strategies that improve flexibility and performance.
In this session, payments leaders from Pinterest and Basis Theory share how champion-challenger models allow merchants to test providers, compare performance, and continuously optimize their payments infrastructure.
What you’ll learn:
- When and why businesses move to multi-processor payments strategies
- How to structure champion-challenger experiments across PSPs
- Operational lessons from merchants managing complex payment ecosystems
Best for: Payments strategy leaders, platform architects, payments infrastructure teams
Make the Most of MRC Vegas 2026
Payments teams attending MRC Vegas will also find valuable discussions on topics such as payment orchestration, global expansion, authentication strategy, AI-driven optimization, and more.
Plus, the conference’s can’t-miss keynote sessions explore how the payments and fraud-prevention landscape is evolving at a broader industry level, offering perspective on the trends shaping the future of digital commerce.
For payments professionals looking to improve performance, MRC Vegas offers the insights, strategies, and connections that help turn payments into a competitive advantage. If you're not one of the 1,800+ industry professionals already registered, it's not too late—secure your spot.
