Southeast Asia is the world’s fastest-growing region for mobile wallets, followed by Latin America and Africa & Middle East, study shows. — Southeast Asia is the world’s fastest-growing region for mobile wallets, followed by Latin America and Africa & Middle East, research from London-based fintech company Boku Inc. shows.
Mobile wallets overtook credit cards to become the most widely used payment type globally in 2019, according to the report, and adoption accelerated during the pandemic. There were more than 2.8 billion mobile wallets in use at the end of 2020, and that’s projected to increase 74% to 4.8 billion by the end of 2025.
In 2020, there were 55 stored value mobile wallets that processed more than US$1 billion in annual transactions. Pakistan’s SadaPay is projected to be the fastest-growing mobile wallet in the world in the five years to 2025, followed by Mercado Pago and PicPay in Brazil.