2024 Payments Megatrends for Asia-Pacific

Thanks to embedded experiences and super-apps, digital wallets are now driving e-commerce payment experiences in Asia:

• Digital wallets had 23% share of POS payments in Thailand in 2022 and 25% share of e-commerce payments

• Digital wallets had 23% share of POS payments in China in 2022 and 81% share of e-commerce payments

• Digital wallets had 56% share of POS payments in the Philippines in 2022 and 81% share of e-commerce payments

Overall, digital wallets have a 73% share of e-commerce payments in Asia, compared to just 15% for cards, 6% for A2A (account to account) and 6% for others.

This digital wallet dominance was part of the stage-setting for PCMI’s recent webinar on megatrends in Asia-Pacific payments, which in turn was part of a series that also covered the Americas and EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa).

After showing how wallets are the top choice for e-commerce and POS payments, PCMI’s expert panel deepened their discussion by offering profiles of 5 key country clusters in APAC, such as:

• The Giants (India and China)

• The Treasury Centers (Hong Kong and Singapore)

• The Mature Markets (Korea and Japan)

• SEA Block (Malaysia, Indonesia, The Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand)

• The Pacific (Australia and New Zealand)

For each of these markets, PCMI’s panel revealed a breakdown of top payment methods, such as this one for Singapore, which shows them for both POS and e-commerce:

Broadening Horizons

After this granular analysis of payments in each of these APAC markets, PCMI’s expert panel shifted focus to the broader trends affecting them in general. Here’s a quick breakdown of what it covered:

Projections for RTP’s growth in APAC, with a projected 563 billion transactions in the region by 2027

• The roles that regulation and KYC compliance will play as A2A dominance deepens

• Factors driving UPI’s plans to fast-track xborder remittances in 2024 in India

• Why Project Nexus may be the solution going forward when it comes to cross-border remittances

• What drove Vietnam propel itself from cash-based to wallet-based, as QR code payments have grown by 471% since 2018, RTP transactions grew from 700m (2019) to 7 billion (2023) and POS terminals in use went from 261K in 2019 to 471K in 2023

• How UPI has become a key enabler of digitalization in India

• Which are the best Asia Pacific payments markets for industry opportunities like embedded payments, innovative B2B solutions, cross-border ecommerce via alternative payment methods, small-business digitalization and loyalty-driven card issuance, among others

And much more.

Click below to download the presentation with the data

Click below to watch highlights of the webinar: