The global digital payments market is projected to exceed $20 trillion in total transaction value by 2028, according to Statista’s Digital Payments forecast. That figure covers everything from mobile wallet transactions and online card payments to real-time bank transfers and contactless point-of-sale purchases.
To put it in perspective, global GDP in 2024 was roughly $105 trillion. A $20 trillion digital payments market means that nearly one in five dollars moving through the global economy will pass through a digital payment rail. That ratio is still growing.
How Digital Payments Reached This Scale
The shift to digital payments accelerated in stages. The first stage was e-commerce. As online shopping grew through the 2000s and 2010s, so did the need for online payment processing. PayPal was the early mover. Stripe, launched in 2011, made it simpler for developers to integrate payments into websites and apps. Adyen, founded in the Netherlands in 2006, focused on enterprise merchants and grew into one of Europe’s most valuable technology companies.
The second stage was mobile payments. In developed markets, Apple Pay and Google Pay turned smartphones into contactless payment devices. In emerging markets, the shift was even more dramatic. China’s Alipay and WeChat Pay processed more than $30 trillion in combined mobile payment volume in 2023 alone, according to estimates from the People’s Bank of China. India’s UPI network handled over 13 billion transactions per month by early 2025, according to the National Payments Corporation of India.
The third stage, which is happening now, is real-time payments. Governments and central banks are building instant payment systems that move money between bank accounts in seconds rather than days. The UK’s Faster Payments Service launched in 2008. Brazil’s Pix, launched in November 2020, reached over 150 million registered users within three years. The US Federal Reserve launched FedNow in July 2023. The European Central Bank is working on a digital euro that could add another layer of real-time payment capability.
Where the Opportunity Is for Fintech Platforms
The size of the digital payments market creates opportunities at every layer of the stack.
At the infrastructure layer, companies building payment rails, APIs, and processing systems are in high demand. Stripe, now valued at $65 billion after its 2023 funding round, processes hundreds of billions of dollars in payments annually. Checkout.com, Rapyd, and Airwallex are building competing infrastructure focused on cross-border transactions. These companies make money by taking a small percentage of every transaction they process, which means their revenue scales directly with payment volume.
At the merchant services layer, companies are competing to help businesses accept and manage payments more efficiently. Square (now Block) started with a card reader for small businesses and expanded into a full suite of financial tools including lending, payroll, and banking. Toast did the same for restaurants. Shopify Payments integrated directly into its e-commerce platform, making it seamless for online merchants to accept payments without a separate processor.
Cross-border payments represent one of the largest areas of friction in the current system. Sending money internationally through traditional banks still costs an average of 6.2% of the transaction value, according to the World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide database. Companies like Wise, which reported processing over $100 billion in cross-border volume in fiscal year 2024, are bringing that cost down to 1% or less in many corridors. Real-time cross-border transfer technology is advancing rapidly.
The Role of Regulation
Regulation is shaping the digital payments market in significant ways. The EU’s Payment Services Directive (PSD2), implemented in 2019, required banks to open their payment infrastructure to third-party providers. This created the open banking movement, which has since spread to the UK, Australia, Brazil, and parts of Asia.
Open banking lets fintech platforms initiate payments directly from a customer’s bank account, bypassing card networks entirely. This is cheaper for merchants (no interchange fees) and faster for consumers (money moves in real time). Account-to-account payments are growing quickly in markets where open banking infrastructure is mature. In the UK, open banking payments grew 85% year-over-year in 2024, according to Open Banking Limited.
Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are another regulatory development worth watching. Over 80% of central banks globally are exploring or piloting digital currencies, according to the Bank for International Settlements. China’s digital yuan has been tested in multiple cities. The European Central Bank is in the preparation phase for a digital euro. If CBDCs gain adoption, they could change the economics of digital payments by providing a government-backed alternative to private payment networks.
What Fintech Platforms Should Focus On
The fintech platforms best positioned to capture value in a $20 trillion market are those solving specific, measurable problems rather than building generic payment tools.
Reducing settlement times is one such problem. In many markets, merchants still wait 24 to 72 hours to receive funds from card transactions. Platforms that offer instant settlement give merchants better cash flow and earn their loyalty. Square’s instant deposit feature, which charges a small fee for immediate access to funds, is a good example of this.
Reducing fraud is another. Global payment fraud losses exceeded $40 billion in 2024, according to The Nilson Report. Platforms that can reduce fraud rates while minimising false declines (legitimate transactions incorrectly flagged as fraudulent) have a direct competitive advantage. Machine learning models trained on transaction data are improving fraud detection accuracy, and AI-powered financial tools are becoming standard in this space.
Serving underbanked populations is a third opportunity. In Sub-Saharan Africa, mobile money platforms like M-Pesa process billions of dollars in transactions annually for people who do not have traditional bank accounts. In Southeast Asia, GrabPay and GCash are doing similar work. The $20 trillion digital payments projection includes these markets, and the companies building payment infrastructure for them are accessing customer bases that traditional banks have historically ignored.
The digital payments market will not reach $20 trillion because any single company wills it. It will get there because billions of people and millions of businesses are shifting from cash and legacy bank systems to faster, cheaper, and more accessible digital alternatives. The fintech platforms that make those alternatives work reliably and affordably will capture the largest share of that growth.
