The global payments sector is undergoing a profound transformation, shaped by structural shifts altering payment companies and how these firms capture value, according to a new Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report.
These shifts include advances in artificial intelligence (AI), digital assets, and growing payment sovereignty.
The report, released in September, shares the current state of the global payment industry, outlining recent developments and forecasts for the years to come. It argues that while over the next five years, the global payment industry will continue to grow, this expansion will be at a notably slower pace, with revenue trends pointing to a secular downshift.
This shift will force companies to embrace cutting-edge technologies to improve efficiencies, develop new revenue streams, and upgrade their infrastructure. Firms will also need to put a deeper focus on areas of true differentiated advantage, build more integrated revenue models, and concentrate on making increasingly sophisticated payments operations yield measurable gains in cost, conversion, resilience, and revenue.
AI sets new performance standards
According to the report, AI is raising standards in performance, allowing banks and payments players to lower the costs of operations, risk, compliance, and software development. These tools also sharpen routing and authorization decisions, while accelerating innovation and new capabilities.
One promising use of the technology lies in treasury functions, where new agentic AI systems enable full automation. These agents are now capable of routing payments in real time based on cost, speed, and straight-through processing criteria while handling currency exposure and cash pooling within set corporate policies.
Software providers and fintech startups, including treasury management systems Kyriba, Serrala, and Bottomline Technologies, are already leveraging these capabilities, offering AI-native cash forecasting and risk tools integrated into corporate workflows. Meanwhile, platforms like Ripple Treasury let finance teams and CFOs manage fiat and digital assets together in one native environment.
Ultimately, agentic AI offers strong potential across many areas by reducing operating costs and boosting efficiency and accuracy. In trade finance, AI can increase automation in document review, yielding accuracy levels above 85% for early adopters using AI for document intelligence, according to BCG.
AI agents can also help banks move payment operations closer to zero-touch. They can automate wire repairs, distinguish true positives from false positives in sanctions screening, and detect anomalous transaction patterns to avoid fraud before funds are routed. They can also handle complex customer service requests, including disputes, chargebacks, reporting requests, and technical issues in account-to-account payments.
In coding and software development, agents can accelerate legacy architecture modernization efforts. A recent BCG proof of concept with a major bank demonstrated 20% to 40% efficiency gains in software engineering projects from using AI agents to automate requirements analysis, test case generation, test automation, and code documentation.
Digital assets create parallel infrastructure
Another major payment trend noted by BCG involves digital assets, which are being rapidly integrated into core systems for money movement.
In particular, cryptocurrencies, tokenized deposits, and digital asset infrastructure continue to attract investment. As of mid-2026, the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies stood at roughly US$2.3 trillion, with outstanding stablecoins accounting for US$260 billion.
Tokenized real-world assets on public chains claimed another US$38 billion, and although smaller in scale, these assets are already reshaping issuance, custody, servicing, and settlement. By 2035, tokenized assets could represent 9% to 16% of global investable assets under a high-growth scenario.
At the same time, large banks are increasingly exploring tokenized deposits, with institutions including JP Morgan, Citi, HSBC, and DBS having either tested or launched them for corporate clients. Central banks are also piloting interoperability mechanisms.
Over time, BCG expects rising demand for tokenized and digital assets to shift value away from existing banks, networks, and intermediaries. Companies will need to identify where they can compete effectively in this new landscape, and then concentrate their capital, technology, and operating model on these areas. For payments companies, this may be distribution, liquidity, compliance, and linking digital assets to real transaction flows.
Ultimately, handling multiple rails will demand that institutions build strong capabilities in wallets, custody, and on- and off-ramps to keep primary client access regardless of the leading monetary format, BCG warns. Firms lacking these services risk losing direct client relationships through disintermediation.
Payment sovereignty fragments global markets
Finally, another major shift in the global payment sector is the rise of payment sovereignty. For most of the past three decades, much of the world’s payment infrastructure consolidated around global networks that governments did not control. That model is changing as nations seek to safeguard economic independence by building their own payment rails, interoperability, and tokenized money.
As of June 2026, 137 countries ran state-owned or mandated 24/7 instant payment systems, with many of these systems reaching remarkable scale. India’s UPI now processes more than 24 billion monthly transactions, Brazil’s Pix processed nearly 80 billion transactions in 2025, and Colombia’s Bre-B handled more than 670 million in its first six months. Across Africa, 36 instant payment systems were live in 31 countries by mid-2025, processing 64 billion transactions worth nearly US$2 trillion in 2024.
Governments are also racing to link domestic rails. In Europe, payment schemes such as Wero are working toward interoperability across national markets. Elsewhere, Brazil has expanded Pix across its border with Argentina. Asian countries are pursuing similar goals, with Project Nexus, led by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and partner central banks, aiming to connect the region’s instant payment systems.
Nations are also exploring tokenized money by building central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and licensing locally denominated stablecoins. In the European Union (EU), the digital euro is a proposed CBDC issued directly by the European Central Bank (ECB) to serve as an electronic equivalent to physical cash.
The project is framed as protection against a payments landscape dominated by non-European card schemes and USD-denominated stablecoins. China, meanwhile, has banned USD-linked stablecoins, and since January 2026, has allowed commercial banks to pay interest on digital yuan wallets, making its CBDC more akin to a deposit account.
These shifts are increasing fragmentation across the global payment landscape, requiring participants to handle multiple links that each provide narrow coverage. For payment providers, the new test of trust will be whether they can give clients broad reach across this fragmented system without forcing them to manage the fragmentation themselves.
Payment revenue forecasts
Global payment revenues are expected to reach nearly US$2.6 trillion by 2030, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of nearly 5% over five years from US$2 trillion in 2025. The figure marks a 2-point decline from the 7% seen between 2019 and 2025, and is below the nearly 8% rate that the industry enjoyed during much of the past decade.
Transaction-related revenues are set to grow by 6% annually through 2030, supported by continued digital adoption, particularly in faster-growing markets, and by inflation. Non-transaction-related revenues will remain the larger pool, but their growth will slow to 5% as the exceptional lift from higher interest rates fades.
Findings from the BCG report align with a new Deutsche Bank paper which highlights how new payment systems, geopolitical and regulatory fragmentation, new payment systems and forms of money, and advances in AI are creating a more complex cross-border payment landscape.
By 2040, the German bank expects cross-border payments to become a multi-rail ecosystem combining traditional correspondent banking, instant payment networks, stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and CBDCs.
Payment networks will become more regional but increasingly interconnected, and AI will handle much of the orchestration, dynamically choosing the best currency, rail, foreign exchange route and settlement mechanism based on cost, speed, liquidity and risk.
Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by febdwithart via Magnific
