The face of payments in Asia Pacific is fast evolving, and given how quickly the trends we outlined in 2024 developed, we can only imagine how much more payments will evolve this year.
In 2025, we envision six developments in Asia Pacific, shaped by the reality that is Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the increasing pace of digital payments adoption, leading to more ecosystem collaborations across the region.
AI is fast transforming the way networks, financial institutions, and fintech platforms tackle payment fraud. Deep learning algorithms analyse transactions in real time, to identify risks before they inflict damage on people and businesses.
We can expect AI to play a more crucial role in personalising payment experiences while enhancing fraud detection capabilities at the same time. In the last decade, Visa has invested some US$3.3 billion in our AI and data infrastructure to make paying and being paid safer and more reliable for everyone. These investments are bearing new fruit today in the form of Visa Protect – a suite of AI-powered solutions that not only strengthens how we prevent card-based payment fraud, but also Account-to-Account (A2A) payments and card-not present (CNP) transactions in this age of e-commerce.
For decades, 16-digit card numbers, one-time passwords (OTPs), card security codes, and security questions have defined payment authentication. Now and increasingly in the future, authentication will soon rely on even more secure credentials in the form of faces, fingerprints or other biometrics.
At the recent Singapore Fintech Festival, Visa unveiled the Visa Payment Passkey which lets consumers authenticate their identities and authorise online payments securely with a scan of their face or fingerprints on their devices.
Consumers will soon be able to pay with a wave of their palm. Piloting first in Singapore with trusted banks including DBS, UOB, and OCBC, Visa announced palm recognition payments with Tencent, where consumers can soon pay for their coffee with their palm at selected merchants, starting with Alchemist, a local cafe.
Real-time payments (RTPs) are highly popular in Asia Pacific today, with the number of RTP transactions here projected to grow some seven-fold by 2027, compared to levels in 2022. But many of these remain largely for domestic use.
This is set to change, with Visa taking a first step to enable consumers to use their payment apps to scan and pay at QR merchants both at home and abroad. Lakala in Mainland China, Touch 'n Go Digital in Malaysia, FOMO Pay in Singapore, LINE Pay in Taiwan, VNPay and Zalopay in Vietnam will become Visa's QR connectors, enabling their QR merchant networks to accept Visa payments. Users from participating digital apps can then scan these QR codes and pay seamlessly and securely.
The growing prevalence of RTP and account-to-account (A2A) payments in Asia Pacific means that more such partnerships will surface, as the ecosystem moves to meet the needs of consumers and businesses alike.
Card-based payments offer a mix of convenience, security, and payment protections – an experience that non-card payments, such as RTP and A2A payments, might not deliver. But that is about to change as new solutions are set to level up A2A payments in Asia Pacific.
For instance, Visa Protect for A2A payments, which uses AI to analyse up to 500 unique risk factors in real time transactions, can be easily incorporated into RTP networks today to significantly reduce the risk of fraud. A pilot conducted in the United Kingdom found that more than half of fraudulent transactions that passed bank detection systems were detected by the system, potentially saving US$420 million for the economy.
In addition, as more regional governments push for multilateral linkages, such as between PayNow in Singapore and PromptPay in Thailand, A2A payments should soon enjoy similar reach and functionality for consumers and businesses in the region.
Embedded finance, where third-party financial services and products are embedded into non-financial digital platforms, saw growing adoption by merchants in 2024 as solutions like Buy-Now-Pay-Later and product insurance give consumers more flexibility in their purchases.
More opportunities could be on the horizon. Embedded finance is expected to unlock over US$242 billion in value for Asia Pacific, with businesses set to benefit most. For instance, Visa’s partnership with SAP embeds virtual payment credentials, acceptance, and enablement solutions into SAP applications, helping finance leaders, procurement teams, and accounts departments speed up supplier payments that used to take weeks to do.
Embedded finance can benefit various sectors, including construction. In Singapore, Visa’s partnership with Doxa and UOB has embedded financing features that allows subcontractors to receive payments on the Doxa Connex platform ahead of invoicing due dates once work claims are certified. This significantly shortens payment timelines and addresses longstanding working capital challenges for contractors.
The global nature of work and commerce has made person-to-person money transfers more important to the consumer and even to businesses, especially in Asia Pacific. In fact, the region is among the heaviest users of remittances around the world, with three out of five top receiving countries – China, India, and the Philippines – coming from Asia Pacific[1].
The speed and convenience of digital platforms have made these person-to-person money transfers easier. It could get faster yet as new collaborations, such as Visa’s partnership with Singapore bank OCBC, which allows OCBC customers to send near-instant peer-to-peer transfers to both Weixin Pay and Alipay with just the recipient’s Chinese national identification name and Chinese mobile number – completing the transfer in seconds compared to two to five days on average.
This is not the only partnership of its kind in Asia Pacific. Last month, Vietnam’s Eximbank teamed up with Visa Direct, to allow customers to send funds to Visa cards in more than 190 countries and territories in as fast as 30 minutes.
The payments industry in Asia Pacific continues to transform rapidly. We are excited to see what the future holds in 2025 as we continue to deliver better ways to pay and be paid for everyone in the region.