The future of payments is being written in Asia Pacific (Apac), where digital transaction volumes are growing three times faster than in North America as consumers leapfrog card-based infrastructure in favour of instant, autonomous payment systems.

According to Capgemini’s World Payments Report 2026, Apac’s non-cash transaction volumes will surge at 20.2% annually through 2029, outpacing North America’s 7.8% growth. The region is projected to account for the lion’s share of 3,540 billion global non-cash transactions by 2029. This should not come as a surprise, as India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) already processes over 19 billion transactions monthly, while Singapore’s PayNow, Thailand’s PromptPay, and Indonesia’s instant networks are linking up to create a regional ecosystem that could redefine cross-border commerce.

Success in this next phase of Apac’s payments boom will hinge on mastering four converging forces: autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) agents, stablecoins, real-time payments, and AI-powered fraud defence.

AI will shop on your behalf

The payments industry is bracing for a major shift. McKinsey estimates that by 2030, up to US$1 trillion in US consumer spending could be influenced by AI agents. 

Unlike generative AI, which requires continuous human input, AI agents can autonomously perform multistep tasks and make decisions independently. This unlocks a new class of applications, such as “smart shopper agents” that scan for optimal price, delivery, and merchant trustworthiness before automatically executing payment. Another example is an “autonomous financial concierge” that manages bill payments, moves money between accounts, invests surplus cash, and negotiates better rates.

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What was once theoretical is now becoming real. In 2025, Visa launched its Intelligent Commerce platform while Mastercard rolled out Agent Pay. Both were designed to let digital assistants manage entire buying journeys. Meanwhile, PayPal teamed up with OpenAI to enable instant checkout within ChatGPT, allowing users to shop and pay through conversational search. 

“Commerce will no longer hinge on human clicks, but on trusted interactions between AI agents. While this shift promises unprecedented efficiency, it also introduces new questions of trust, transparency, and merchant autonomy,” says Ben Wong, general manager of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong at Adyen.

He continues: “Building confidence in this new era will require collaboration across the entire payments ecosystem, which is why Adyen maintains deep, strategic partnerships with key players (including Visa, Google, and OpenAI) to ensure that emerging standards are open, secure, and pro-merchant.”

For Apac, where mobile commerce already dominates, the shift could accelerate even faster. The question is whether regional champions like Grab, Gojek, and Paytm can build autonomous payment capabilities before global platforms do.

Stablecoins emerge as the new cross-border rail

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As AI systems gain autonomy, they need a payment infrastructure that can keep up. Stablecoins are emerging as that backbone, moving money at machine speed across digital economies.

US dollar-denominated stablecoins now exceed US$250 billion in market capitalisation, with annual transaction volumes surpassing US$26 trillion, according to Deloitte’s Shaping the future of payments 2026 report. The July 2025 GENIUS Act added momentum by mandating full reserve backing and stricter reporting, boosting institutional confidence. Nearly half of financial institutions already use stablecoins, with another 41% planning to integrate blockchain-based rails.

Once seen as speculative, stablecoins are now regarded as a new payment rail for cross-border value movement, offering near-instant settlement, embedded compliance, and programmable features. Such infrastructure is essential for agentic AI systems as they depend on money that moves at machine speed, remaining always on, interoperable, auditable and programmable.

Apac offers a fertile ground for stablecoin adoption. Its cross-border payment volumes are projected to reach US$23.8 trillion by 2032, up from US$12.8 trillion in 2024, according to a joint report by Money20/20 and FXC Intelligence. The region’s heavy cross-border flows and fragmented currency markets make stablecoins attractive for faster and lower-cost settlements. 

Moreover, regulators in Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and South Korea are rolling out reserve-backed licensing regimes that bring stablecoins into the regulated financial system. Still, Deloitte warns that stronger know-your-customer, anti-money laundering, and cybersecurity frameworks will be crucial to maintaining trust.

Real-time becomes the standard

According to Boston Consulting Group (BCG)’s Global Payments Report 2025, Apac’s real-time account-to-account (A2A) payment volumes grew 36% in 2024 as networks scaled across key markets. India’s UPI alone processes over 19 billion transactions per month as of July 2025.

Beyond speed, instant payment networks offer features such as “request for payment” functionality and the ability to attach data to payment messages, which can help improve processing efficiency and the overall customer experience. The report also notes that the broader and more embedded the real-time offering, the greater its commercial potential. 

Cross-border instant payments are emerging as the next major opportunity in this real-time revolution. By bypassing traditional correspondent banking and SWIFT-based transfers, they could capture up to 30% of transaction-related revenue in key remittance and trade corridors, according to BCG. 

Momentum is building across Asia. Singapore’s PayNow and Thailand’s PromptPay already enable low-cost international transfers using only a phone number, while the Project Nexus (led by the Bank for International Settlements) is linking payment systems in Singapore, India, and Thailand through a shared hub.

Interoperability could cut settlement times from days to seconds and shift global flows onto faster, more efficient rails. The challenge now lies in aligning data standards, authorisation protocols, and regulatory trust across markets. 

The AI fraud arms race

As AI agents gain autonomy, the fraud landscape will become increasingly complex. Deepfakes, synthetic identities, and AI-driven social engineering are now more difficult to detect and faster to deploy. Deloitte projects global fraud losses will surge 75% to US$28 billion by 2027, up from US$16 billion in 2023.

Apac is particularly vulnerable. Rapid digital uptake has outpaced fraud defences, driving a rise in mobile wallet scams, push-payment fraud, and phishing attacks. In response, financial institutions are deploying advanced biometrics, liveness detection, and deep-learning analytics to verify identities and flag anomalies in real-time.

Next-generation defences hinge on zero-trust payment networks and dynamic risk scoring, which continuously assess transactions using behavioural and contextual data. Visa’s Advanced Authorisation already evaluates each payment against hundreds of attributes and account history, helping prevent US$28 billion in fraud annually across VisaNet transactions.

Agentic AI is also joining the defence. Deloitte’s report highlights “real-time fraud response agents” that detect suspicious activity, freeze accounts, and initiate refunds within seconds. This signals a new era where AI battles AI in the fight against financial crime.

From AI agents that shop, negotiate, and invest autonomously to stablecoins that move value across borders in seconds, Apac is building a self-orchestrating financial ecosystem. Real-time payment networks are merging into regional corridors that bypass legacy rails, while AI-powered defences evolve to counter a new breed of digital fraud. 

Payments are evolving into intelligent exchanges between humans and machines. The next chapter in finance will be written by algorithms and autonomous systems moving money at machine speed.