P2P payments have gone business – plus other payment trends shaping 2025

The global payments landscape is undergoing a massive transformation, and emerging markets are at the center of this shift. Across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, new payment methods are rapidly redefining how people and businesses engage with financial transactions and fostering the growth of digital commerce.?

In this special edition of Payments & Beyond, featuring data from the latest edition of the EBANX Beyond Borders study, we've gathered the top payment trends for 2025 and a handful of exclusive insights that show payments' impact as enablers of digital economy growth in emerging markets.

1. From P2P to P2B: the new ways to pay merchants in emerging economies?

The growing popularity of P2P-based payment systems in emerging markets, such as instant transfer methods, digital wallets, and mobile money, has driven the expansion of these methods to people-to-business payments (and even business-to-business payments).

All these alternative payment methods (APMs) have in common real-time capabilities, seamless, mobile-born, and digital-first operations. Although they weren't originally intended for merchant payments, their widespread adoption in daily life has made them the preferred choice for online purchases in many countries, particularly where card ownership remains low.

Actually, these alternative and P2P-born methods already command a significant share of online sales in key markets, as shown in the graphic below.?

The highlights here are India's UPI and Brazil's Pix, two of the world's largest instant payment systems that were quickly adopted by online businesses.

It's interesting to see the diversity of these P2P-based methods born in Latin America, whose reach and usability have transformed them into good payment options for businesses as well. This is the case with Mercado Pago, a digital wallet created within the Argentine online retail giant Mercado Libre; Colombia's PSE, a transfer payment born in Colombia; and PagoEfectivo, the cash-based voucher created in Peru.

In Africa, highlights include Kenya's M-PESA and Nigeria's MoMoPSB, mobile money payments, a method with enormous traction in Sub-Saharan Africa.

As digital commerce in emerging markets is expected to grow at a 19% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2023 to 2027, well above the global average CAGR of 9.5% projected for 2022-2027, according to projections by Payments and Commerce Market Intelligence (PCMI), the opportunities for these P2P-born continue to expand in online sales are many.?

2. Instant is the new cash

Most online sales in emerging markets are done through mobile phones. “A lot of emerging markets are actually ahead of developed markets because they're thinking about more flexible, consumer-friendly payment methods – with QR codes, digital wallets, A2A transfers,” says Andy McHale, Senior Director of Product and Market Strategy at Spreedly, a global open payments platform. “The US, the UK, and parts of Europe are still pretty card-centric and slowly adopting things.”

Among the mobile-based methods on the rise, instant account-to-account transfers are growing the fastest as preferred payment methods, replacing, transaction by transaction, what was previously done in cash.?

This trend is increasingly evident in e-commerce, where the share of cash payments in digital transactions continues to decline yearly across all regions, making way for account-based transfers. “This is already well-established for day-to-day transfers and is increasingly moving into digital commerce,” says Lindsay Lehr, Managing Director of PCMI (Payments and Commerce Market Intelligence).

The leaders of this trend are India's UPI and Brazil's Pix. PCMI's forecast for the 2024-2027 period concluded that UPI will continue to dominate the online market in India (it currently powers 55% of online sales volume in the country), while Pix is following a similar trajectory in Brazil and it is expected to surpass credit cards as Brazil's leading online payment method by this year. In Africa, an area historically reliant on cash-based transactions, those A2A payment methods are projected to overtake cash as the dominant payment method by 2026.

“Instant is the new cash. We are talking about payment systems that provide the same level of convenience and speed that, in a way, mimics cash transactions. This is also why instant payments have such success and uptake in emerging economies." Juliana Etcheverry, Director of Country Growth – Latin America at EBANX

3. Card-like features and improvements in UX are the next steps for alternative payments

In order to truly scale, alternative and mobile-first payments need to innovate beyond technology –? enhancing the user experience, remaining cost-effective, and being accessible to those who don’t have access to credit or traditional banking.

In this context, we have seen two very strong movements in APMs. The first is the incorporation of features traditionally exclusive to cards, such as expanding credit options and enabling recurring payments.?

"Increasing purchasing power means distributing more credit in the market. Previously, this was done through credit cards. Now, APMs are stepping in, offering credit solutions with higher limits directly within the shopping experience. This will translate to more money circulating in the market.” Eduardo Abreu, VP of Product at EBANX

The second is improving the user experience to drive higher purchase conversions while fending off competition from new entrants. Key to this success will be improvements in the checkout process, such as eliminating redirects to banking apps and reducing mandatory fields. “These enhancements are critical for ensuring the continued dominance of leading alternative payment methods in each country or region,” says Abreu.?

4. Payments are driving businesses’ financial inclusion and B2B digital commerce

As more consumers access digital payments, naturally, more businesses accept and use them. This reinforced the role payments play as enablers for businesses' digital and financial inclusion, especially in emerging markets.?

In Brazil, for instance, businesses have seen stunning financial inclusion since Pix went live. The number of companies with active financial services has increased 3.4 times in a five-year period, from 2018 to 2023, with a steeper curve from the end of 2020, when Pix was launched.?

A study by the Central Bank has made it clear that payments, particularly Pix, were the key drivers of this shift, with companies moving from a credit-based relationship with the financial system to a payment-based one.

According to Leandro Carmo, Brazil Regional Director at EBANX, Pix plays a key role in the financial inclusion of companies in the country, especially SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses), largely due to its impact on cash flow. "Pix payments are processed the next day, while credit card payments can take up to 30 days. This quicker payment cycle helps small businesses avoid cash flow problems and keep their finances in better shape."

It is no coincidence that Pix evolved from being a predominantly P2P (person-to-person) instrument to having almost 60% of its transaction value directed to a business, which includes informal companies and microentrepreneurs, according to a recent Central Bank study. Moreover, of all Pix volume, 45% is B2B (business-to-business).

5. Digital-first issuers are boosting online card spending

Cards remain a cornerstone of digital commerce in emerging economies, with significant adoption rates and transaction volume. A key driver behind cards’ sustained presence in e-commerce is the entrance of new players into the market, including new issuers such as digital banks and fintechs. These companies have expanded access to credit and provided innovative card-based solutions tailored to digital commerce.

“There is an increased ownership and usage of cards due to ‘The Fintech Boom.’ In Latin America, these companies have made cards more accessible, with the end game to integrate more people into the formal financial system,” explains Etcheverry.

Internal EBANX data underscores the impact of these efforts in digital commerce in Latin America, where a significant portion of online purchases are now made through cards issued by neo-banks and fintech companies.?

Brazil is at the forefront of this trend, with digital issuers like Nubank, C6, and Banco Inter accounting for 41% of the total value of card transactions. This momentum is building in other Latin American countries, notably Colombia (21%) and Argentina (19%), where active fintech companies like Nequi and Mercado Pago are driving card issuance.

There are still many opportunities to be addressed, although in different contexts. In Chile, where the banking sector is well established, and nearly 80% of the population owns a card, the online sales volume paid through neobanks and fintechs’ cards drops to only 8%, while in Mexico, where the banking sector is yet to be disrupted, most card online volume also comes from incumbent issuers.?

This list is just a glimpse of the in-depth analyses and exclusive data gathered in Beyond Borders 2025. It is also a snapshot of some of the trends that we have seen grow and impact the payments industry and digital commerce in emerging markets, however, there is much more innovation and transformation happening, as these regions are among the fastest growing in digital presence and consumption.

That's all for now, folks!