World Payments Trends 2025

Through its annual World Payments Report, Capgemini looks into several potential trends for 2025.  

1. Open Finance

The Capgemini experts highlight that Open-finance-based use cases will grow as regulators improve financial data access.

• Bank executives interviewed for this World Payments Report underlined that non-standardized APIs - and therefore the inability to control data use and sharing - are notably limiting the impact of Open Banking.
• Today, the maturity of markets greatly varies from country to country: certain markets like Brazil are regulated while US are market driven. According to the report, 62% of banks are currently unprepared for the transformation required to adopt Open Finance: this could lead to them missing out on potential business opportunities.

Yet, the future entry into application of FiDA and PSD3/PSR in the EU will address the current limitations, and so should the Dodd-Frank Act in the US. The latter will make it mandatory to share customer data in a standardized format with authorized third parties. Moreover, the types and quantities of Open Banking and Finance use-cases are increasing. One can notably highlight the following use-cases: PFM, Account opening and onboarding, Payroll initiation (B2C), categorization and expense management, risk scoring, payment reconciliation (B2B), A2A payments, social payments (P2P), and BNPL and pay-by-back (C2B).   

2. Instant Payments Adoption

This second trend section starts with Capgemini underlining that fast global adoption of instant payments is cannibalizing cards while BigTech wallets consolidate their dominance, significantly impacting payment profitability. The usage of IP is becoming more and more common and standard across the globe and will face significant increases in adoption across the years to come: 

• IP are set to grow by 16% of global payment transaction volume in 2023 to 22% in 2028
• A2A payments could represent 15-25% of future card transactions volume growth (77% of executives debit and prepaid cards would be most impacted by A2A)
• By 2027, 49% of global transactions will be made up of digital wallets

The reports highlights that with IP becoming the preferred method of payments over checks and debit cards, banks stand to benefit from lower transaction costs. In addition, shifting small purchases to instant low cost, A2A payments, achieved through bypassing intermediaries (card networks) may stimulate micro-payment adoption among consumers. Moreover, banks could secure strategic relationships with corporations by offering instant capabilities such as just-in time payments, instant cash sweeping, etc. and by enabling real-time corporate treasury management Several factors will in the near future influence the instant payment adoption rate, from infrastructure (for instance messaging standards, existing vs. dedicated wholesale settlement systems, etc.) and rules (notably participation mandates and payment initiation methods) to governance (with the ownership of instant payments system, either public, private, or hybrid) to user focus (e.g. the number of use cases). The report also underlines the creation of Wero, launched by the European Payments Initiative (EPI), which consists in a digital wallet and instant money transfer solution, as well as Pix, in Brazil. The latter recently debuted in Europe with a pilot project at the airport of Barcelona, enabling travelers to make QR payments.  

3. POS Innovations

These innovations are necessary to enhance merchant acquisition capabilities and increase consumers payment options.

• Online sales are expected to go up leading to companies having to review their payment options: businesses are reassessing their Payment options
• The growth of Open Banking and faster payment rails have expanded seamless payment options for customers
• 71% of merchants expect Soft POS to replace traditional terminals
• With new regulations, notably in the EU and in the US, embedded payments are poised to drive POS innovations

Soft POS systems provide low-cost and low-maintenance solutions that will enable not only customer flexibility but also help up-selling and cross-selling. Also, customer flexibility clearly improves whenever more payment choices are offered, whether it be digital wallets, split payments through financing options (such as Buy Now Pay Later, etc.). Adding such payments methods could enable merchants to, on the one hand, reduce the number of abandoned orders, and on the other, boost their revenues. In this context, banks but also third-party software providers that provide payment services can remove friction at the customer experience layer and support merchants to deepen customer loyalty through analytical tools.  

4. Cross-border payments

Multi-territory instant payments corridors are enhancing cross-border payments, empowering businesses with speed and efficiency.

• 58% increase in Europe between 2023 and 2028 according to GlobalData
• This growth will notably be fueled by initiatives such as instant cross-border payments (IXB) between the US and the EU
• So will the adoption of ISO20022 (a multi part International Standard which describes a common platform for the development of messages), by enhancing payment rail interoperability

Capgemini experts explain that emerging technologies such as CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) and DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) can reduce reliance on intermediaries and minimize exchange fees, enabling banks to offer lower transaction costs to merchants and businesses. Banks could also help enhance the trust of merchants in cross-border transactions by leveraging the real-time monitoring capabilities offered by instant payments corridors.  

5. Composable cloud-based payment hubs

Such payment hubs offer unified, cost-effective and consolidated multi-rail payment processing capabilities.

• Legacy systems used by corporate treasuries and financial institutions are fragmented meaning slow processes and making maintenance cumbersome.
• There is an opportunity for banks to streamline processes through a hub that centralizes disparate payment activities within a single platform which is customizable to meet firms needs and requirements
• More and more Financial Institutions are partnering up with PaaS specialists to set-up and scale cloud-based payment hubs

Cloud-native architectures are simplifying integration with core treasury platforms, thus reducing operational costs, and enhancing interoperability and transaction success. This means boosting efficiency as well as customer experience, while also reducing risk. On the business side, it also enhances scalability and reduces overhead. Such payment hubs also help businesses innovate rapidly and enables a faster tome-to-market. By managing all payment rail operations with a modular, cloud-native hub, organizations can adapt productivity-enhancing payment technology innovations and comply with regulatory changes  

6. Multi-rail payment strategy

Multi-rail payments will enhance flexibility and offer different payment methods through a single interface, highlights the report. More and more companies are seeing an increase in diversified payment methods all within one platform.

• Businesses will be able to provide to customers payment processing options while building a more resilient platform.
• The goal of this strategy is to create a payment ecosystem that will leverage real-time payments, with as many established networks as possible, alongside banking networks, traditional card networks, and more
• This model allows companies to target the P2P, B2C, C2B, B2B and G2C sectors, with several use cases, through one single interface

Such a multi-rail approach provides a strategic hedge to banks as it protects current revenue generated whiles creating additional opportunities. Moreover, the data captured through these systems could be used by banks to offer personalized product recommendations and eventually cross-sell their other financial products and services.
  

7. Decentralized identity

Decentralized identity management combats fraud and helps customer control personal data.

• 54% of consumers across 18 markets and regions reported being targeted by various forms of fraud
• In Europe fraud attempts significantly rose by 80% from 2021 to 2024, with AI fraud emerging as a threat
• Decentralized Identity empowers users to securely store and utilize their identity documents

Such solutions can notably streamline the banks KYC (Know Your Customer) processes, allowing for a faster and more user-friendly onboarding experience for customers Using decentralized digital identity solutions therefore provides a secure environment for banks to store and verify user information. In this respect, by leveraging these solutions, banks will be able to provide their customers with greater control over their digital identities, leading to enhanced trust between banks and their clients.  

8. Data Monetization

As explained, payments data is driving innovation and leading to the creation of new revenue streams. With the development of new regulations and the appropriate framework, banks will have the opportunity to monetize their data and generate extra revenue.

• By using customer data, they can unlock new revenue streams by leveraging insightful data and create more personalized financial products. If given the possibility, banks may also share anonymized data with third-party companies.
• Current Open Banking regulations give little room for data monetization. But upcoming open finance regulations such as FiDA will allow data holders to charge a reasonable compensation for making data available through an interface.

Banks could then be able to create new revenue opportunities by offering business insights to corporate small and medium business customers helping them address customer pain points, improving performance, quality, and efficiency, underlines the Capgemini report The use of the ISO 20022 standard could also empower banks with richer data to provide services such as better-quality reconciliations, real-time payments, and automated invoicing, optimizing business process for corporates and generating service fees. Finally, in a world filled with data, banks could also be able to leverage additional data sources, for instance social media data to enhance customer insights, optimize financial products and drive innovation in service offerings for additional revenue generation.

Download the report