I have been in change management or innovation work in payments for over 20 years and I have been hearing ‘change is the new normal’ for every single one of my working days. And although we keep saying it, it is no less true for being a cliché.
In fact, it has been true every time we have said it and, weirdly, it keeps being even more true the next time we say it. And the next time. Life in payments isn’t dull, that’s for sure.
Think about it: 10 years ago, the majority of our transactions as consumers took place in person using cash or cards at the point of sale (POS).
E-commerce wasn’t as pervasive as it is now, but even for e-commerce, transactions were largely card based. Even though we’ve had versions of digital wallets since the 90s, their prevalence is a ‘now’ thing.
In fact, in the 10 years between 2014 and 2024, the trend of how we pay was fully reversed, with the value of over 60% of all e-commerce transactions being digital even though physical cards still dominate at the POS.
Unless you are in China, of course. There, digital wallets own the airwaves, accounting for 84% of all e-commerce and 70% of all POS transaction value.
At this point, you may be thinking ‘your musings are weirdly specific today’, and you would be right.
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I have been geeking out on Worldpay’s Global Payments Report 2025, so actually I am full of facts and figures today. But even more significantly, I have been reflecting on the patterns of the change we have seen and what it all says for the road ahead because, when you read the report, you won’t be able to resist thinking that ‘change’ has been the new normal for a while around here… and it isn’t done with us yet.
As you may expect, my first feeling while reading the report was confirmation: digital payments have become default. Real-time payments have become baseline. We have been neck-deep in this work for a long time. Of course this is the reality. This is what we’ve been working towards all this time.
But in reading the report, you can’t escape the realisation that, although digital payments are emerging as a dominant force and that fact is absolutely true, it is not the whole truth.
So my second feeling was mild surprise, if I am totally honest.
Non-cash options are dominating but, frankly, Europe is not as cashless as I thought, once you step outside the Nordics. Nowhere near. Spain is hovering at 36% cash use at the point of sale, while Germany is at 35% (which, yes, surprised me). And that’s the same as Mexico, by the way. Which is among the highest in LatAm.
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And yet digital wallet use has soared where I expected it to be lower, reaching 33% in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for example.
What should not have been surprising (yet it still made me roll my eyes)is that North America is still at a stubborn 81% card and cash usage, with low representation of digital wallets at the POS and with e-commerce.
I mean…
Literally last month I walked into a store in downtown San Francisco of all places and they offered a 3% discount if you opted for cash and wouldn’t even accept Apple Pay.
Who does that?
Don’t say it. I know… evidently this place. But also, many others, given the data in this report. Seriously: read and see for yourself. Though, equally seriously, Apple Pay was invented down the road, was my protestation. Come on now.
This trend is changing, truth be told.
I saw it with my own eyes and the report documents that shift in the US across states. Even a year ago most physical retail outlets wouldn’t accept a digital wallet payment without the presence of a physical card. Now almost everywhere does. On a personal level, I love that because I have not carried a physical wallet since before Covid. So you know. It works for me. But I also love it because it validates the direction I have always hoped payments will start galloping towards.
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Real-time, digital-first, seamless payments are here to stay and I am here for it.
We know it, and Worldpay’s Global Payments Report gives very compelling proof that it is so.
There is a catch, though.
As you read through the report, you can’t escape the realisation that real-time, digitally native payments are here to stay, for sure, but they are not done settling in yet.Nowhere even close to settling in.
In so many ways, the Global Payments Report will confirm and bring to life in rich statistics what you already know if you work in payments: transformation has been profound and is nowhere near done. And, frankly, the facts and figures that surprised me are, if anything, the best reminder of all the work still to be done (not least to harmonise protocols and solutions cross-border) and that change will be coming at us for a while longer.
If you look at the numbers on the whole, it really jumps out at you that in 10 years we went from only 3% of global in-person shopping transaction value being digital, to a 38% average in 2024 and a corresponding decrease in card and cash usage. Moreover, we know that today more than half of all e-commerce transaction value happens on mobile devices: on the move and in real time. So it’s not just the payment method that is changing. It is life as we know it.
Payments are merely keeping up.
10 years ago, this image was still not the norm. Today we don’t even blink thinking about it.
Can we imagine what will disrupt this disruptor in the next 10 years?
The report throws a few ideas on the table but makes it clear that the next paradigm is not done forming yet. It’s not wearables… and it’s not quite digital wallets… and probably not stablecoins in their current form… but something new will inevitably come and we need to be ready. Don’t get complacent is the feeling I got jumping out at me from every page of the report.
“Not digital wallets?” I hear you say.
I saw you raise an eyebrow there. I know you’ve been reading about the Wallet Wars from many of your favourite authors recently. So let me unpack what I mean by ‘wallets don’t hold the answer’.
Reading through the report, the theme that comes at you with force and great consistency is that transactions are moving online (check), becoming real time (check) and, although we don’t have cross-border harmonisation of account-to-account and real-time payment infrastructure, at the national level the transition is a case of everything, everywhere all at once.
Other than UPI. UPI is going global, and I am here for this.
But back to my point: if everything is moving online, becoming real time and digital first, why am I not joining the crowds that shout that the digital wallet wars will define the next era of payment innovation?
Well.
Because as I've always felt and the report makes very clear… digital wallets are great for customer convenience… but how each wallet is funded matters. And more than half of all active wallet users (yours truly included) fund their wallets using credit, debit or prepaid cards.
So although we see numbers of physical card usage declining, a healthy chunk of digital payment activity is still going through their rails. In short: the world is changing, but cards are sitting pretty. And this is because they got with the programme of change and transformation.For now, at least.
So, as we look around us now, in a world where real-time payments are here to stay, the conversation is moving less to ‘what’s next in payments?’ and more to ‘what’s next within payments?’
What do I mean by that? Real-time payments need real-time fraud detection. Dealing with deep fakes and impersonator threats is where the rubber hits the road with AI in this vertical.
Futuristic use cases? Good.
Real-time fraud detection? Better.
As I finished reading the report, I was left with two thoughts:
The first is that although the world is moving in the same direction inexorably, it isn’t doing so in collaboration or harmony. Although digitally native payments, real-time payments and account-to-account connectivity is the theme across the globe, the infrastructure, protocols and solutions are neither harmonised nor, frankly, talking to each other.
Cross-border payments were the name of the game for a while a few years ago. It feels that we will be back there to tackle the next frontier of truly global connectivity.
The second thought I had was that, although digitisation is going deep in terms of how we transact on an individual level, the majority of us still fund our wallets using cards.
That majority is slim, however.
Will the trend shift? And how soon?
The answer is always the same: consumers will always move towards convenience and stay for safety. So the story isn’t finished being written, and one thing is certain: with increasing options for consumers, the winner will be the option that gives minimum friction, maximum fraud protection and as close to universal acceptance as possible.
I would love your thoughts once you’ve read the report. I must admit, my feeling as I came to the final page was: well, that’s a lot. And it’s only the beginning.
More change to come. No surprises there.
It’s what we signed up for.
#LedaWrites
About the author
Leda Glyptis is FinTech Futures’ resident thought provocateur – she leads, writes on, lives and breathes transformation and digital disruption.
She is a recovering banker, lapsed academic and long-term resident of the banking ecosystem.
Leda is also a published author – her first book,Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition,is available to orderhere.
All opinions are her own. You can’t have them – but you are welcome to debate and comment!
Follow Leda on X@LedaGlyptisandLinkedIn.
