APAC mobile wallet adoption driven by e-commerce growth

Immediate payment systems fuel continued expansion of mobile wallet usage.

With eight of the top 10 countries in mobile wallet adoption coming from APAC, Arun Kini, APAC Managing Director for Payments at Finastra, said that this trend shows no signs of slowing down, driven primarily by the rapid growth of e-commerce in the region.

“Most of the economies moved directly from cash onto mobile wallets,” Kini explained. “There was no in-between step, and that trend is going to continue because e-commerce, which largely fueled this growth, is continuing to grow rapidly.”

In addition to e-commerce, the integration of immediate payments across borders has also played a significant role in the growth of mobile wallets. “With the interconnectivity of immediate payments between different markets, we will see mobile wallet usage continue to expand,” Kini said, noting that SMEs in the e-commerce space benefit from immediate access to funds.

During Sibos 2024 Beijing, Kini highlighted the growing interest in fintech innovations within cross-border payments and the role of AI in driving payment efficiency. “Banks are interested in alternative modes of cross-border payments, and that automatically makes us interested in it,” Kini said.