[DigitalToday reporter Jae-won Choi (최재원)] Analysis showed that building a real-time payments network does not mean instant payments will immediately spread. Existing payment ecosystems in each country, such as card and cash habits, merchant participation and pricing policies, determine the pace of adoption.

Fintech News Switzerland said on Aug. 31 that McKinsey classified the global instant payments market into three types. The first is markets where instant payments have become the main payment method, such as India and Brazil. India launched the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in 2016 and has grown into the world’s largest instant payments market, processing more than 20 billion transactions a month. UPI accounts for about one-third of India’s total transaction volume. Brazil also saw the share of instant payments rise to about 30 percent of total transactions after introducing Pix in 2020. Monthly transactions reached about 8 billion and users exceeded 170 million.

The second type is markets such as the United Kingdom and Europe, where instant payments complement existing card ecosystems. Instant payments made account transfers between consumers and businesses faster, but cards still dominate in-store payments. The share of instant payments is also about 10 percent of retail payments. The European Union, through the Instant Payments Regulation (IPR), required euro instant credit transfers to be offered at no higher cost than regular transfers and also mandated a payee verification function.

The third type is markets such as the United States and Mexico, where instant payments must compete with existing payment habits. The United States has the Real-Time Payments (RTP) system launched in 2017 and FedNow, which began in 2023, but 2025 transaction volumes were about 447 million and 8 million, respectively. That remains small compared with total U.S. payments of about 345 billion a year. Mexico also introduced CoDi and DiMo based on the Interbank Electronic Payment System (SPEI), but the share of instant payments is below 5 percent.

McKinsey cited expanded bank participation, favorable pricing for consumers and merchants, and continuous feature additions as factors behind success in India and Brazil. By contrast, in markets where cards or cash are already firmly established, infrastructure alone makes it difficult to shift users. The analysis said the key to competition in instant payments is not how fast a network is, but how convenient and economical it is compared with existing payments.