PaymentGenes relaunches its flagship Payments Foundation Course

PaymentGenes, a payments-focused advisory and capacity-building firm, has updated and relaunched its flagship Payments Foundation Course.

The 2026 edition is designed to equip professionals across the payments ecosystem with the broad knowledge and practical insights needed to excel in their current roles while developing the forward-looking skills required in a rapidly evolving industry.

Open to professionals at every stage of their careers, the program explores how payment methods, industry participants, transaction flows, risks, regulations, and customer expectations connect in practice. Alongside building a strong theoretical foundation, the course aims to give participants the confidence and practical capabilities to apply payment knowledge in real-world business environments.

Building on previous editions – which have been completed by professionals from more than a dozen countries – the refreshed 2026 curriculum introduces several new topics that have become increasingly important to the payments landscape. These include instant account-to-account payments, payment orchestration, tokenization, PSD regulation, open banking, user experience, and payment conversion optimization.

The expanded curriculum reflects the rapid pace of change across the sector, where innovation continues to reshape how consumers and businesses move money. Stablecoins, embedded finance, and Banking-as-a-Service are among the trends transforming the payments ecosystem, creating demand for professionals with broader and more up-to-date expertise.

Built for an industry that never stands still

According to Jeroen van Dijk, Managing Partner of PaymentGenes Academy, the refreshed course was inspired by the need to keep pace with “an industry that never stands still.”

Key developments reshaping the market include evolving regulation, the growing role of technology providers, the expansion of the payments ecosystem, and the emergence of innovations such as decentralized payments and tokenization.

“For teams shaping how money moves, a consistent, up-to-date understanding of payments is a strategic imperative, and exactly what the 2026 Foundation Course is built to deliver,” he says.

Reflecting on the relaunch, Van Dijk adds: “The 2026 edition of our Foundation Course reflects how much the industry has evolved, and our commitment to keeping pace with it. I am proud of how we created this upgrade as a team, and of the even more engaging learning experience it has become. It remains 100% human. We look forward to training the next cohorts of payments professionals and seeing what that will unlock for them and their organizations.”