A posting by the Atlanta Fed cautions that invisible and embedded transactions may lead to overspending. When payments fade into the background, losing track of spending, overlooking transactions, or feeling less in control of financial decisions becomes much easier. On average, respondents find cash more helpful to prevent overspending and track their expenditures than electronic, and especially contactless, payment methods. When paying with cash, respondents are more aware of the exact amount that they pay. But as PYMNTS Intelligence has found, consumers and businesses across all verticals have been enthusiastically embracing frictionless commerce. Embedded transactions are fast becoming “table stakes” for providers, with 54% of independent software providers and 74% of marketplaces enabling digital payment experiences, a necessary step “to remain competitive.” “Embedded is the prefix for most of the innovations we talk about now in payments. We embed payments into software (something we’ve been doing ever since the dawn of eCommerce), identity into payments, lending into checkout flows, banking into virtual accounts, point solutions inside of tech stacks, GenAI into software, offers into banking apps, and networks into networks … A lot of what was called invisible at the dawn of the 2010s with the introduction of Uber is now described as embedded … But it’s not enough to just “embed” something into something else. Embedding should be almost invisible and frictionless.”