Asia-Pacific is the leading global region in mobile payments
Asia-Pacific is known to be the most advanced market for mobile payment, with over half of all smartphone users in the region making mobile payments. Several countries in the region have become world leaders in payment technology adoption and the ones who lag behind are on a strong growth trajectory. This technology not only promotes smartphone usage for payments, but goes further to enable the development of cashless societies in the region.
Japan: the outlier among its regional peers
When looking at the region from the lens of advanced markets, there is a decent amount of variation in terms of payment adoption. For an extremely advanced economy like Japan, cash transactions are still widely used. Although mobile payment and other alternative payment methods are helping reduce the share, as it stands, cash is still extremely popular. On the other side of the coin, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand are moving rapidly towards cashless societies.
Australia expected to win the Asia-Pacific cashless race
Among the advanced markets rapidly moving cashless, Australia is the first payment market in the region expected to turn completely cashless and its coming fast, by 2022. Breaking down how Australia pays, in E-Commerce, PayPal and credit cards dominate. Amidst digital payment services, using bill payment services and online payment platforms penetrate a large segment of the population. Its neighbor New Zealand is also moving in this direction and is projected to only have one-in-ten transactions made with cash by 2022.
Advanced markets in Asia-Pacific may be leading in developing cashless societies, but emerging markets are also pointing in this direction as well. Payment technology advances and adoption rates boost the region’s progress to becoming the most advanced payment market in the world.
For more details on this trend, see the report “Asia-Pacific Online Payment Methods 2019” by yStats.com.
