Leaving on a Jet Plane

A tour of digital wallets and real-time payments in Asia Pacific

Several years ago, after a successful payments conference in Bangkok, one of the marketing team running the event commented he was surprised by the high level of attendance and engagement from across the region. Perceiving the city to be remote, he had thought twice about flying 8,000 miles to get there but was glad he made the trip.

With 59%¹ of the world’s population, or 4.8 bn in the Asia Pacific region, I pointed out to him that billions of people were living within a 1,000 mile radius of the conference.

Asia is the place to be for payments but, like my former colleague, few outside the region, especially in Europe and North America appreciate how big and how advanced the payments landscape is there, especially in the realm of digital wallets and real-time payments.

In previous articles I have shown how real-time Account-to-Account (A2A) payments (bank account and non-bank stored value account) made through digital wallets are emerging at scale all over the world, citing numerous examples. My hypothesis is these digital wallets (distinct from card wallets like Apple Pay) will displace card volumes to become the dominant way we pay, globally over the next decade.

This hypothesis is tested through measuring real-time payments per capita for different countries and comparing them in each region in the world over the next few years. Real-time payments are driven also by adoption of online/mobile banking and open banking but I expect those countries with A2A digital wallets to lead – we shall see.

Last week, I covered Europe², this week it is Asia Pacific.

Starting point

Table 1 lists the real-time A2A clearing systems and digital wallets in 20 countries in Asia Pacific, covering 4bn people or 83% of the region’s population. Japan is missing from the table as its Zengin clearing system may be real-time when operating but is available only during business hours. As such, it fails to meet the definition of a real-time payment system, which needs to be available 24/7 (for the obvious reason payments are delayed if initiated outside business hours).

Table 1 – Real-Time Clearing Systems and Digital Wallets in Asia Pacific

Table 1 shows that most countries in the Asia Pacific region operate real-time A2A payment clearing systems and have A2A digital wallets. The region has a strong foundation for using digital wallets with A2A payments and although some countries are more advanced using them than others, their use in the region is poised for further growth.

Real-Time Payments per Capita

Figure 1 shows the real-time payments per capita for 11 countries where data is readily available. China is excluded as, with the highest value by far at 1,147 payments per capita, it distorts the graph.

Figure 1 – Real-time payments per capita in Asia Pacific, including on-us bank payments

After China, Thailand has the next highest value at 485 real-time payments per capita, closely followed by Singapore and Malaysia at 440 and 330 respectively. India processed 179bn real-time payments last year (across UPI, IMPS and on-us bank payments) but even so, its real-time payments capita is relatively low at 123, about the same as Switzerland (the highest in Europe).

The lowest figure is from Pakistan at four real-time payments per capita in 2024. Its Raast (“direct” in English) system went live in 2022 and processes close to 90 million payments per month, growing at 87% annually³. Raast QR launched last year and in common with other countries in the region using QR codes, is starting to get rapid adoption, boosting volumes through digital wallets. It looks likely that real-time payments in Pakistan will rise strongly over the next few years.

Generally, the use of QR codes with real-time payments and digital wallets for making payments in-store or online is a key feature in almost all the countries in Figure 1 and a key factor in driving volumes. 500m merchants in India for example use them, mainly street vendors and small businesses⁴. Typically, QR codes are standardised to avoid a proliferation of codes and displays in stores and to make it viable for sole traders to use them, with for example QRIS in Indonesia, BharatQR in India, KHQR in Cambodia and SGQR in Singapore to name a few.

For comparison with Figure 1, the European average (weighted by population) is 59 real-time payments per capita annually. The Asia Pacific average (weighted by population) including China is far ahead at 499 and excluding China, the average is still ahead at 113 real-time payments per capita.

The real-time payments per capita metric is useful as it enables comparison between countries, which vary in population from 6m in Singapore to 1.46bn in India. However, it is important to keep sight of absolute volumes as well, with the total number of real-time payments in Asia Pacific, excluding China, being 268bn payments in 2024, or 1.9trn including China.

China

China requires a separate mention given its real-time volumes are so large – in total 1.6 trn real-time payments in 2024. 286bn of these are bank payments, with 1.3trn non-bank payments through digital wallets, mainly Alipay and WeChat Pay⁵. These volumes warrant a deeper dive and an interpretation of their composition, which I will cover in a later article if I find more detail.

If the non-bank real-time payments are excluded from the metric, the real-time payments per capita in China drops from 1,147 to 202. China is in a league of its own at the moment.

Cash Withdrawals per Capita

To complement the real-time payments per capita metric, Figure 2 shows the cash withdrawals per capita for those countries where data is available. Tracking cash withdrawals per capita is a useful additional metric to measure changes in consumer payment preferences.

However, cash withdrawals are only an approximation for cash usage which is measured properly by the number of times bank notes and coins are exchanged in purchases and transfers before being deposited back in the banking system, an unknown quantity.

Cash withdrawals numbers are mainly for ATM withdrawals but can include agent and bank branch withdrawals, where the data is available. Pakistan for example has a relatively low number of ATMs, for which data is available, but no data is available for bank and agent withdrawals – cash usage there is likely to be high, even though the ATM withdrawal metric in Figure 2 is low.

Figure 2 – Annual cash withdrawals per capita in Europe (ATM, agent and bank branch)

Over the next few years, the cash withdrawals metric will be most useful by looking at the annual change for each country.

For comparison with Europe, the average (weighted by population) cash withdrawal per capita in 2024 was 15.

Continued Adoption

It is evident from the metrics and starting point that real-time A2A payments managed through digital wallets are the dominant payment method across almost all of Asia Pacific and will continue to grow. This is already the case in many countries, including the largest, India and China. Japan and New Zealand are the countries most notable by their absence from Table 1.

Payment volumes in China must be close to saturation for now and it will be interesting to see how much further they have to grow.

India’s volumes, enormous already, are growing at over 50% per year and are likely to reach over 500bn annual payments within five years.

Generally, expect to see substantial increases in the real-time payment per capita metric in Figure 1 by this time (April) next year, with the possible exception of Australia. Australia has a digital wallet, Beem It, mainly for P2P payments using debit cards and is the only country in Figure 1 without an A2A digital wallet in widespread use for consumer-to-business payments. My expectation is that Australia’s growth will be lower than most other countries in Asia Pacific if A2A digital wallets are indeed the biggest driver of real-time payment growth.

Conclusion

China shows the level of real-time payments that can be achieved with digital wallets across Asia Pacific. In turn, Asia Pacific shows for other regions such as Europe where payments are heading over the next decade.

QR codes are a key component common to all the countries with strong digital wallet adoption driving real-time A2A payments. QR codes enable a single payment acceptance method from different wallets and brands. They are the equivalent to old-world point-of-sale terminals which do the same for cards, by accepting multiple types (credit, debit etc) from multiple networks (Amex, Mastercard, Visa etc). However, QR codes are simpler to use and are far more versatile, usable in-store, on the street and online and very cheap to set up, as evidenced by the 500m merchants in India who use them.

Real-time A2A payments with digital wallets dominate in Asia Pacific and this dominance is increasing. The payments landscape in Asia Pacific is far more advanced than in many countries outside the region, in particular in Europe and North America, far more so than many realise.

For those planning or building new payment mechanisms and infrastructure, it pays huge dividends to go to Asia Pacific and take a look at what is being achieved there.

Like my former colleague in marketing, you will be glad you made the trip.

1. Asia Pacific population total: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/asia-population/#google_vignette

2. European real-time payments: https://jeremylight.substack.com/p/the-times-they-are-a-changin

3. State Bank of Pakistan Payment Systems Quarterly Review Q4FY25: https://www.sbp.org.pk/psd/pdf/PS-Review-Q4FY25.pdf

4. QR Code tiger 14 April 2025: https://www.qrcode-tiger.com/upi-qr-code

5. People’s Bank of China Payment System Report 2024, section (IV) Electronic Payment - non-bank payment institutions: http://www.pbc.gov.cn/en/3688110/3688259/3689026/3706133/5188172/5649949/2025040114593718714.pdf