Digital disruption has revolutionised the payments landscape around the world. Covid-19 accelerated the uptake of digital wallets and other forms of mobile transactions, while disruptors are rapidly moving to cross-border payments, fuelled by the war in Ukraine.

EIU’s latest white paper, Beyond borders: a new era for digital payments, showcases our brand new five-year forecasts for domestic payment flows and offers critical insights into the future of cross-border transactions.

Key forecasts include:

• Following a surge during the pandemic, when lockdowns forced consumers online, growth in digital payments will soften during our five-year forecast period (2022-26).

• The number of ATMs will stagnate or decline, while debit and credit cards will struggle to maintain market share as mobile payment platforms gain more traction.

• While digital disruption to domestic payments continues, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war will cause parallel disruption to cross-border payment systems and potentially challenge the dominance of SWIFT.

• Countries will seek to interlink their national fast-payments systems, reducing intermediaries and bringing down the cost of sending money abroad.

• Countries across Southeast Asia are in the process of interlinking their fast-payments systems to allow travellers across the region to purchase goods and services by scanning quick-response (QR) codes.

Focusing on Asia’s payments landscape, Swarup Gupta, financial services lead, noted:

“Asia represents the most dynamic digital payments landscape worldwide. Freshly minted fintech firms are solving long-standing issues with legacy payment methods, often by using innovative mobile  applications, capturing a young customer base in the process.”

The full report, ‘Beyond borders: a new era for digital payments’ is available to download here.

More award-winning insights on the financial services landscape can be found in EIU Viewpoint, our country and industry analysis service. EIU Viewpoint provides unmatched forecasts, analysis and data for nearly 200 countries and six key sectors, helping organisations identify prospective opportunities and potential risks.