McKinsey’s 2025 Global Payments Report has found that the USD 2.5 trillion payments industry (with USD 2 quadrillion in value flows) is entering a pivotal era of diverging systems, regionalization and transformative technologies. Global payments revenue grew 7% annually from 2019–2024, but momentum slowed to 4% last year amid peaking interest rates, margin compression and fee pressures. McKinsey projects 4% annual growth through 2029, bringing total revenues to USD 3 trillion. They also warn that profitability will depend on new monetization models for low-cost rails, AI-enabled value-added services and regulatory adaptation.
Three forces are expected to shape the next phase of the payments landscape:
- Fragmentation and regionalization – geopolitical tensions and countries prioritizing “payments sovereignty” are dismantling unified global standards, resulting in a mosaic of regional systems.
- Rapid digital asset adoption – stablecoin issuance has doubled since early 2024, signaling a breakthrough toward broader acceptance as well as offering a hedge against inflation in volatile currency regions.
- AI integration – AI agents are being developed to operate autonomously to select, optimize and transact on humans’ behalf. This shift will force merchants to rethink how they interact with consumers and compel payment providers to embed intelligence at the edge of transactions.
To thrive in this complex, fragmented environment, payments players must adopt six core strategies:
- Design for intelligent simplicity – simplicity, transparency and personalization must be embedded into offerings.
- Treat interoperability as infrastructure – players will want adaptive infrastructure that supports this natively.
- Move intelligence to the edge – routing logic, fraud detection and liquidity management will need to be embedded directly in software agents, APIs and workflows, not centralized in batch systems or led by humans.
- Make compliance programmable – modular policy engines and region-specific logic will supersede manual workflows and hard-coded rule books.
- Play through ecosystems, not against them – standalone moats will erode, with embedded roles in larger ecosystems enduring.
- Earn trust upstream – firms will want to ensure that transparency, explainability and error resolution are designed into their systems so that users and regulators can understand what happens and why.
