By Patti Murphy
As efforts are underway to make real-time payments the norm for the United States, developing economies are whizzing past the country in achieving real-time payments ubiquity. Today, there are real-time payment networks in over 80 countries, according to payments solution provider Volt.
India dominates the space, with 129.3 billion real-time transactions in 2023, according to ACI Worldwide. To put this into perspective, there were more real-time payments made in India last year than in the world's top-10 real-time payments markets combined. And India's total made up 49 percent of all global real-time transactions, ACI revealed in It's Prime Time for Real-Time, the company's fifth annual report on the state of real-time payments around the globe
Real-time payments accounted for 266.2 billion payment transactions globally in 2023, recording year-over-year growth of 42.2 percent, ACI reported. By 2028, real-time payments, globally, are forecast to total 575.1 billion.
In the United States, RTP, the real-time payments network operated by The Clearing House, averages 1 million payments per day. In October 2024, the network handled a record 31.7 million transactions valued at $25.4 billion, according to a statement released by RTP. The Federal Reserve also operates a real-time network, FedNow, but has yet to publish volume or value data.
"Modern real-time payments require collaboration, and they encourage a new generation of market entrants for banks to either compete or cooperate with – often both" said Craig Ramsey, global head of real-time payments at ACI.
The Asia-Pacific region is by far the largest regional market for real-time payments, with four of the global top five real-time payment markets by volume. In addition to India, Thailand (20.4 billion transactions in 2023), China (17.2 billion) and South Korea (9.1 billion) are all going strong.
Indonesia ranks number eight, globally, with nearly 2 billion real-time payments in 2023, but is charting the fastest growth overall in Asia. ACI expects that between 2022 and 2028 Indonesia will chart a combined annual growth rate of 44.6 percent.
Indonesia's lack of legacy infrastructure—it had been a predominantly cash economy—was a key advantage in moving the country to real-time payments. It leapfrogged typical digital evolution paths, moving straight to ISO20022, a multi-part international standard for financial messaging that facilitates exchanges of structured data between financial institutions, customers and networks.
Asian markets are also leading the way with real-time cross-border payments. For example, payments using the Malaysian real-time system known as DuitNow can accept QR code real-time payments originating from Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and China, ACI reported.
The Middle East is also growing fast, with expectations that real-time payments will increase from 855 million in 2023 to 3 billion in 2028. Oman, Kuwait and Qatar all launched real-time payment schemes in 2023, joining more established regional players like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and UAE.
Egypt launched its Instant Payment Network and the InstPay mobile overlay service in March 2022. Real-time payments are in a "very early growth phase" in Egypt, ACI wrote. The 39 million real-time payments made there in 2023 represented 1.4 percent of overall payments by volume. By 2028, real-time payments are projected to total 1.1 billion and account for one-third of payments in the country.
Africa had the highest real-time share of electronic payments in 2023 at 40 percent, with Nigeria leading the way. Nigeria logged 7.9 billion real-time payments in 2023, with transactions forecast to grow at a CAGR of 20 percent to reach 19.7 billion by 2028.
The Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System launched NIBSD Instant Payments (NIP) in July 2011. NIBSS is supported by all commercial banks, micro-finance banks and mobile money operators and can be used via any number of modalities including internet and mobile banking, bank branches, POS terminals and ATMs. This has contributed to high adoption rates for NIP, the ACI report explained.
In 2021, Nigeria launched a QR-code standard to facilitate instant P2B and P2P payments, making real-time payments a viable alternative to cash. By 2028, real-time payments in Nigeria are projected to total 19.7 billion, representing better than 50 percent of transactions in the country.
South Africa was an early adopter of real-time payments, launching its Real-Time Clearing (RTC) network in 2006. Yet, real-time payments have not gained significant prominence there, due to several factors, including limited awareness and high fees charged by RTC banks, ACI noted. In 2023 there were 284 million real-time transactions in the country; by 2028 the total is projected to reach 755 million.
With 1.5 billion people and the world's fifth largest economy, India has become a proving ground of sorts for real-time payment initiatives. It began in 2016, when the government demonetized 86 percent of currency, taking large denomination bills out of circulation.
The stated objective was to reduce corruption and tax cheats. It also proved to be a shot in the arm for digital payments, Bhaskar Chakavorti, dean of global business at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, wrote in a 2017 op ed published by the Brookings Institute.
While mobile wallets were designed for smart phones, only 17 percent of Indians owned smart phones at the time, so the government devised a payment app that worked with ordinary flip phones. This created the potential to connect 400 million users in distant rural areas to real-time payment rails, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Also in 2016 the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a real-time, mobile-enabled system was launched by the National Payment Corporation of India, a nonprofit entity formed by the Reserve Bank of India (the country's central bank) and the Indian Banks' Association.
Today, RBI fosters a varied ecosystem of payment networks, including a credit-debit card system, a large cash-machine network, and a payment system using the national identity program to bring banking to underserved areas, IMF researchers wrote in a 2022 country focus titled How India's central bank helped spur a digital payments boom.
NPCI CEO Dilip Asbe predicted that growth in terms of individual digital payment users would triple between 2022 and 2027 to total 750 million, and that merchant users could double to 100 million.
Merchant adoption and uptake are crucial for real-time payments growth. To spur adoption, the Indian government has eliminated merchant discount rates and issued QR codes to all merchants for UPI acceptance. This is incentivizing merchants of all sizes to accept UPI payments, ACI stated.
"With a burgeoning cashless society, the old ways are increasingly forgotten by the country's hundreds of millions of young people," the IMF said.
UPI's ubiquitous reach has made it the first choice for Indian consumers and businesses, including traveling consumers. Payments using UPI can be made in Malaysia, Indonesia, UAE and France, further demonstrating how Asian economies are pushing the envelope of real-time payments.
"Real-time payments—and especially cross-border payments—are the future," said Debbie Guerra, chief product officer at ACI. "They remove payment friction, provide greater liquidity in the financial system, and ultimately drive economic growth and financial inclusion." 
Patti Murphy, self-described payments maven of the fourth estate, is senior editor at the Green Sheet. She also co-hosts the Merchant Sales Podcast, and is president of ProScribes Ink.
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