Nepal and Bhutan have adopted payment services based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). India is also among countries where domestic schemes are being used to enable cross-border, real-time international transactions and remittance payments. Similarly, India and the US are introducing additional competing services that will sit alongside the established schemes. Many markets are replacing or renovating their established real-time services, especially those that repurposed their corporate real-time gross settlement (RTGS) services to cater for instant payments, such as Brazil, the UK, Japan, South Africa, and Mexico. Many government departments are also using real-time payments for fee and tax collection and benefit and pension payouts. Private firms have adopted them for salary payment, accounts payable, mandates for direct debits, and bulk payments. Once considered only for consumer and retail use, real-time payments are increasingly targeting business and corporate applications. In many geographies, new methods and established systems are functioning side by side, according to The Global Payments Report 2022 by financial products and services company FIS.
Covid restrictions have given a fillip to digital payments throughout around the world, and economies such as China, the US, Indonesia, and India are at the forefront of the innovations taking place.