Commercial Payments in Asia Pacific and Australasia: Regional Overview

Delivery

This report comes in PPT.

Key findings

Regional dominance of electronic payments

With higher transaction limits, lower fees, electronic payments have been dominating commercial payments in Asia Pacific and Australasia.

With less penetration of commercial cards compared with developed markets, banked enterprises in emerging markets have largely relying on account transfers.

Rise of fast payments, digital wallets and electronic money orders

Electronic payments have been boosted by trends in national standardisation and cross-border inter-operability of fast payments and QR payments (digital wallets). Digital wallets also contributed to financial inclusion of unbanked merchants. In mainland China, regulatory initiatives in electronic money orders have been benefiting payment digitalisation. 

Marginal growth in cards in emerging markets

With closer ties with local businesses, local operators such as National Payment Corp of Vietnam have gained growth traction especially in debit cards, defending against Visa, etc.

Also, business needs in travel, entertainment and procurement also have been driving card demand growth, boosted by emergence of virtual card solutions as well.

Challenges with commercial payment digitalisation include business culture, digital IDs, scams and fraud

For underserved and unbanked enterprises, paper transactions including cheques still have significant weight driven by culture, with opportunities for paymentdigitalisation.

However, key challenges include lack of digital business IDs and growing fraud and scams, which increase costs and risks for onboarding and credit decisioning.