Asia’s real-time payments surge, but gaps persist: StanChart

[SINGAPORE] Asia is leading the world in real-time and digital payments, but regulatory fragmentation and interoperability challenges are preventing businesses from fully capitalising on this growth, said a senior Standard Chartered (StanChart) executive.

Michael Spiegel, StanChart’s global head of transaction banking, told The Business Times: “While there has been significant progress over the past few years, specific gaps include challenges related to identity verification, fraud-prevention measures, and consumer protection across different jurisdictions.”

For instance, a common challenge is reconciling payment data, where mandatory fields needed in one country’s transactions differ from those in another.

One way to close this gap would be for more players in the industry to shift towards adopting ISO 20022, a global standard for standardising electronic payment data exchange across borders, Spiegel said.

ISO 20022 is an international messaging standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to improve the way financial institutions exchange payment information.

Unlike older message formats, ISO 20022 supports richer, more structured and granular data – for example, detailed remittance information and party identification. This allows for greater transparency, automation and reconciliation, while also strengthening compliance checks and fraud detection.

“We believe the standardised, richer and more structured data formats that ISO 20022 will introduce will enable more seamless cross-border payment,” noted Spiegel.

Although adoption of the new standard is not yet mandatory everywhere, there are “significant benefits” for companies that do take it up. Beyond facilitating real-time payments, the uniform data captured also allows firms to gain “better analytics and enhanced forecasting”, and to strengthen working capital management.

However, implementation requires change.

Compliance systems must be upgraded for the new standard, while user interfaces and databases will have to be modified to handle richer, more detailed data. The new data format also demands enhanced data governance and validation to maintain accuracy and compliance.

“Corporates must also consider their data storage and processing capabilities,” he added.

This comes as digital and real-time payments continue to grow globally, especially in Asia-Pacific (Apac), where growth is outpacing North America and Europe.

Spiegel cited findings from the Capgemini Research Institute’s World Payments Report 2025, which showed that non-cash consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer transaction volumes in Apac rose 20.4 per cent year on year in 2024.

That outpaced North America’s growth of 6.5 per cent and Europe’s 15.5 per cent.

The report also projects business-to-business non-cash transaction volumes in the Apac region to increase about 14 per cent annually between 2023 and 2028, compared with a global average of 10.8 per cent.

Spiegel said: “With the interlinking of different national real-time payment schemes on the cards, the adoption will continue to grow on a cross-border basis.”