Instant payments reach $22tn

Instant payments reach $22tn

According to McKinsey & Company, instant payment flows across the 15 largest adopting economies reached almost $22 trillion in 2024. While this represents only around 1% of the estimated $2 quadrillion flowing through the global payments system, McKinsey expects instant payment values to grow by 15% to 18% annually over the next five years.

India and Brazil Set the Pace

The clearest examples of mass adoption are India and Brazil, where regulators combined infrastructure with strong incentives, broad participation and continued product development.

India’s Unified Payments Interface now processes more than 19 billion transactions each month, representing almost one-third of the country’s transaction volume. Government support, zero fees and interoperability between banks and third-party applications helped UPI achieve a scale unmatched by other instant payment systems.

Brazil has followed a similarly dramatic trajectory. Since the central bank introduced Pix in 2020, instant payments have grown to almost 30% of total transaction volumes.

McKinsey says virtually all Brazilian micro, small and medium-sized businesses now use instant payments, with Pix accounting for approximately 40% of their sales mix.

Infrastructure Alone Does Not Guarantee Adoption

The experience elsewhere has been markedly different.

Mexico’s instant payments account for less than 5% of transaction volumes despite the availability of its SPEI infrastructure. Meanwhile, adoption of RTP and FedNow remains comparatively modest in the US, where consumers already have access to cards, ACH, digital wallets and services such as Zelle.

McKinsey notes that RTP processed approximately 447 million transactions during 2025, while FedNow handled around eight million. By comparison, Zelle processed 4.2 billion transactions.

The contrast demonstrates that simply building real-time rails does not create demand. Successful markets have combined widespread participation with compelling consumer and merchant economics and continuous innovation.

Payments Economics Begin to Shift

For banks, acquirers and card schemes, the implications extend well beyond transaction speed.

As instant payments displace traditional payment methods, established revenue pools can come under pressure. McKinsey argues that banks are responding by developing services around lending, treasury management and premium cards, while acquirers are expanding beyond acceptance into software, analytics, reconciliation and financing.

Card networks are similarly broadening their capabilities across tokenisation, fraud prevention, identity and banking infrastructure.

The emerging lesson is that instant payments are unlikely to produce a single global model. In some markets they may become the dominant payment rail; elsewhere they will complement cards and existing account-to-account systems.

Either way, competitive advantage increasingly lies not in processing the payment itself, but in the services and customer relationships built around it.