How the world gets paid

USD

Uniquely fragmented: the bank-owned rail moves the most money, the social app has the most people, and which one you use is mostly a question of who your friends are.

1. ZelleTopperson to person~55% of mobile P2P value; $1.2T sent in 2025
2. Venmo~21% of P2P value, but the widest reach — ~62% of P2P users
3. Cash App~11% of P2P value; ~57M monthly actives
4. PayPalVenmo's parent; still the default for online checkout
5. Apple CashApple Cash rides iMessage — no app to install

Venmo began in 2009 when Iqram Magdon-Ismail forgot his wallet visiting his college roommate Andrew Kortina in New York, then tried to repay him by posting a check. The first version settled debts over text message. Zelle came from the other direction — the big banks' clearXchange consortium, relaunched under one brand in 2017 to keep P2P inside banking apps.

Sources 7, 8, 9

CAD

One bank-consortium rail did what a dozen apps do elsewhere: an email address or phone number is the account number, and everyone already has it in their banking app.

1. Interac e-TransferTopUsed by ~82% of Canadian adults; 1.2B+ transfers a year
2. PayPalCommon for online and cross-border
3. Wealthsimple CashChallenger cash accounts with $handle transfers

Interac has been a not-for-profit cooperative of Canadian financial institutions since the 1980s. e-Transfer launched in 2002, making Canada one of the first countries where sending money to an email address was an ordinary retail banking feature.

Sources 10, 11

BRL

The clearest case anywhere of a central bank simply out-competing cards and cash: free, instant, 24/7, and used by 76% of the population.

1. PixTop54.7% of all retail payment transactions (H2 2025); 79.8B in 2025
2. NubankThe bank most Brazilians hold the Pix key in
3. PicPayWallet layered on top of Pix
4. Mercado PagoCheckout and marketplace payments
5. CashNow behind Pix and debit by reach — 68.9% of adults

Banco Central do Brasil launched Pix in November 2020 and made it mandatory for large banks to offer — which is why adoption was near-universal on day one rather than a decade later. On 5 December 2025 it cleared 313.3 million transactions in 24 hours.

Sources 1, 2

MXN

Strong rails, slower consumer adoption: the instant infrastructure has existed for years, but cash and cards still carry much of day-to-day retail.

1. SPEITopBanxico's instant interbank rail — the plumbing under everything
2. Mercado PagoThe wallet with real consumer reach
3. CashStill the default for a large share of everyday retail
4. DiMoPhone-number layer over SPEI, launched to make it feel like Pix

SPEI has run since 2004, but the consumer-facing attempts came later — CoDi (2019) never found traction, and DiMo is the second run at putting a phone number on top of the rail.

Sources 56

ARS · USD — Savings, rent and anything big is quoted in dollars; the peso is for the week's spending.

A wallet-first market shaped by inflation: people hold balances in apps that do something with them, and QR acceptance is close to universal.

1. Mercado PagoTopThe dominant wallet, well beyond its marketplace origins
2. Transferencias 3.0Central-bank interoperable QR standard
3. MODOThe banks' joint answer to Mercado Pago

Mercado Pago began in 2003 as escrow for Mercado Libre listings — the same trajectory Alipay took in China, arrived at independently and at almost the same moment.

Sources 56

COP

Two big bank wallets that couldn't pay each other — until the central bank forced interoperability with alias-based keys.

1. NequiTopBancolombia's mobile-first account, used as a wallet
2. Bre-BCentral-bank instant rail; fully live October 2025, 227 institutions
3. DaviplataDavivienda's equivalent, strong in cash-in/cash-out

Bre-B went fully live in October 2025 after a two-week controlled run, connecting banks, wallets and PSPs to one rail with human-readable aliases (llaves) instead of account numbers.

Sources 55, 56

PEN · USD — Dollar accounts are ordinary retail banking, a habit kept from the 1980s.

A two-horse race between bank-backed QR wallets, now interoperable, in a market that was overwhelmingly cash a decade ago.

1. YapeTop54% of Peruvians use it to pay in physical stores
2. PLINThe rival bank alliance — 34% for in-store payments

Yape started inside Banco de Crédito del Perú; PLIN was assembled by the competing banks. The standoff ended when regulators pushed the two to interoperate.

Sources 56

GBP

No dominant P2P app, because there didn't need to be: instant bank transfer has been free and built into every banking app since 2008.

1. Faster PaymentsTop5.55B transactions worth £4.84T in 2025
2. Monzomonzo.me links for splitting
3. RevolutCross-border and multi-currency
4. StarlingChallenger bank, strong on instant transfers
5. PayPalStill leads online checkout

The Faster Payment Service launched in 2008, making the UK one of the first large economies with near-instant retail transfers as a default. Open banking then arrived on top — 351 million open banking payments in 2025.

Sources 27

EUR

Card-shy and privacy-conscious: wallets and invoices carry online spend, the domestic debit scheme carries the high street, and cash held on far longer than its neighbours.

1. PayPalTopThe default for online checkout, far ahead of cards
2. girocardpaying businessesThe domestic debit scheme that owns in-store
3. WeroThe European Payments Initiative's A2A wallet, rolling out
4. N26Mobile-first banking
5. RechnungPay-by-invoice after delivery — still distinctly German

Germany's resistance to credit cards left an unusually large opening online, which PayPal walked through. Wero is the banks' attempt to take that ground back with an account-to-account rail.

Sources 24, 26

EUR

A domestic card scheme so entrenched that international cards are usually co-badged onto it, with P2P handled by bank-consortium apps rather than a breakout brand.

1. Cartes BancairesToppaying businessesAround half of all transactions run on the domestic scheme
2. PayPalSignificant share of online transactions
3. WeroReplacing Paylib as the banks' P2P layer
4. RevolutLarge and growing challenger base

Cartes Bancaires was founded in 1984 as a shared interbank scheme — the same consortium logic that produced Interac in Canada, and with the same result: no room for a Venmo.

Sources 26

EUR

The country that turned 'send me a payment request' into a verb — tikkie is used in Dutch the way venmo is used in English.

1. iDEALToppaying businessesThe default way the Dutch pay online
2. Tikkie9M users; 170M payment requests worth €8.5B in 2025
3. bunqbunq.me request links
4. Bank transfer (SEPA)IBAN transfer for anything larger

iDEAL launched in 2005 as a shared bank standard for online checkout and became near-universal; ABN AMRO's Tikkie (2016) put a request link on top of it. iDEAL passed to the European Payments Initiative in 2023.

Sources 22, 23

EUR

Bank-owned, phone-number-based, and so widely used that 'te hago un bizum' is just how people say they'll pay you back.

1. BizumTop~32M users; ~70% of Spanish adults; 1.1B+ operations in 2025
2. Cardspaying businessesStill the high street default — for now
3. PayPalCross-border online

Launched in 2016 by the Spanish banking sector as a shared utility rather than a product any one bank owned — the arrangement that reliably beats standalone apps in Europe. It now handles roughly 90% of Spain's instant payments and is pushing into in-store.

Sources 16, 17

EUR

The rare European market where an independent startup — not a bank consortium — built the domestic wallet everyone actually uses.

1. SatispayTop6.5M users and 450k merchants
2. Cardspaying businesses≈31–33% of e-commerce volume
3. PayPalPart of the ≈35% wallet share, with PostePay and others
4. Bank transfer (SEPA)Bank transfer for larger amounts

Satispay was founded in 2013 and deliberately bypassed the card networks, connecting directly to IBANs so it could undercut card fees for small merchants. That fee argument is why corner shops pushed it.

Sources 25

CHF

A national wallet that beat Apple Pay on its own turf, and is accepted in around 81% of physical shops.

1. TWINTTop6M+ users — roughly two in three Swiss; 901M transactions in 2025
2. Cardspaying businessesDebit and credit still lead overall value
3. Apple CashThe main international wallet, now behind TWINT

Two competing Swiss wallets — Twint and Paymit — merged in 2016 rather than split the market. The combined product carries roughly 64% of Swiss mobile payments.

Sources 18, 19, 20

SEK

Swish is what Swedes use between people; cards are what they use at tills. Cash has quietly become a rounding error.

1. SwishTop~8–9M users — close to 86% of the population
2. Cardspaying businesses~92% of in-store purchases when all card forms are combined
3. Cash5% of last in-store purchases in 2025, down from 10% in 2023

Six Swedish banks launched Swish together in 2012, on top of the existing Bankgirot instant clearing. The Riksbank credits that early bank-built instant rail as a main reason cash use fell as fast as it did.

Sources 12, 13

NOK

Near-total adoption in a small market, then a merger to survive at European scale rather than be squeezed by the global wallets.

1. VippsTopPart of Vipps MobilePay — 12.4M users across the Nordics at end-2025
2. Cardspaying businessesBankAxept domestic debit at the till

DNB launched Vipps in 2015; it merged with Denmark's MobilePay and Finland's Pivo to form Vipps MobilePay, owned mostly by Norwegian banks with Danske Bank holding 27.8%.

Sources 21

DKK

One of Europe's earliest breakout bank wallets, and for years the template everyone else in the Nordics copied.

1. MobilePayTopNow part of Vipps MobilePay's 12.4M Nordic users
2. Dankortpaying businessesThe domestic debit card scheme

Danske Bank launched MobilePay in 2013 and opened it to customers of rival banks — the decision that made it a national utility instead of one bank's feature.

Sources 21

EUR

Latecomer to the Nordic wallet consolidation and now its growth story — e-commerce volumes up 79% in a year.

1. MobilePayTopMerged with Finland's Pivo; the group's fastest-growing market
2. Cardspaying businessesLong-standing high card penetration

OP Financial Group's Pivo folded into the Vipps MobilePay merger, replacing a third national wallet with a shared one.

Sources 21

PLN

A six-digit code generated in your banking app — no card number, no redirect — that took roughly 70% of Polish e-commerce by volume.

1. BLIKTop2.9B transactions worth PLN 441.5B in 2025; 20.7M active accounts
2. Cardspaying businessesSecond online at ~17% of transactions
3. PayPalMostly cross-border

Polski Standard Płatności, owned by six Polish banks, launched BLIK in 2015. Over 90% of Polish mobile banking users can now reach it, which is why it works as a default rather than an alternative.

Sources 14, 15

INR

The largest real-time payment system on earth, and a deliberate design choice: the rail is public infrastructure, the apps competing on top of it are not.

1. UPITop23.2B transactions worth ₹29.9T in May 2026 alone
2. PhonePe46.2% of UPI volume (May 2026)
3. Google Pay32.7% of UPI volume
4. Paytm7.9% of UPI volume
5. CashStill present, but no longer the default in cities

NPCI launched UPI in 2016 with interoperability as the point — any app can pay any account. Regulators have long planned a 30% per-app market-share cap to stop the duopoly hardening; the deadline is now December 2026.

Sources 3, 4

CNY

Two super-apps carry almost everything, QR codes beat cards to the till, and the state's digital currency is now trying to become a third rail.

1. AlipayTop~54% of mobile payments (OECD, 2025)
2. WeChat Pay~42% — the other half of a ~96% duopoly
3. UnionPayThe card scheme underneath, plus its own QR app
4. e-CNY3.48B cumulative transactions by January 2026

Alipay began in 2004 as escrow for Taobao purchases. WeChat's counterattack came at Lunar New Year 2014, when digital red envelopes (hóngbāo) took WeChat Pay from 30 million to 100 million users in weeks — Jack Ma called it a 'Pearl Harbor moment' for Alipay.

Sources 5, 6

JPY

The developed market where cash held on longest, now shifting fast — QR payments went from nothing to a fifth of all cashless transactions in six years.

1. PayPayTop70M+ registered users; ~2/3 of code-payment market
2. Credit cardspaying businesses~30% of payments — the bulk of Japan's cashless total
3. Rakuten PayWallet plugged into the Rakuten points economy
4. LINE PayLINE Pay, riding the messaging app
5. CashStill ~57% — cashless reached 42.8% in 2024

SoftBank and Yahoo Japan launched PayPay in 2018 and bought the market with a ¥10 billion cashback campaign that paid users to switch. It cleared 7.46 billion transactions in 2024 — about one in five of Japan's 38.8 billion cashless payments.

Sources 28, 29, 30

KRW

Wallets layered on top of an already card-saturated market, each attached to a platform people were on anyway — search, chat, or brokerage.

1. Naver PayTopNaver Pay — used in the past month by 64.7% of mobile payers
2. Kakao PayKakao Pay — 49.8%, riding KakaoTalk's near-total messaging reach
3. TossToss Pay — 31.1%, the fastest-growing super-app
4. Credit cardspaying businessesExceptionally high per-capita card usage underneath it all

Korea's wallets grew out of non-payment giants: Naver from search and shopping, Kakao from messaging, Toss from a P2P transfer app that became a bank. Rewards, not acceptance, is what moves share here.

Sources 31, 32

IDR

The wallets compete; the QR code doesn't. One national standard means the sticker on a warung counter works with whichever app you happen to have.

1. QRISTop59M users and 42M merchants by end-2025; ~90% of them MSMEs
2. GoPay~32% e-wallet share
3. DANA~28% share, backed by Ant Group
4. OVO~23% share, tied to Grab and retail
5. ShopeePayShopeePay — strongest inside e-commerce

Bank Indonesia introduced QRIS in 2019 to end the era of merchants taping four different QR codes to the till. The merchant discount rate is capped at 0.7%, which is why the smallest sellers took it.

Sources 33, 34

PHP

Mobile-money-first rather than bank-first: for many Filipinos the wallet is the primary financial account, not an add-on to one.

1. GCashTop94M registered users; ~89% of mobile wallet market share
2. Maya50M+ users; 8.2M banking customers via Maya Bank
3. InstaPayThe central bank's instant rail beneath the wallets
4. CashStill dominant in sari-sari retail, but falling fast

GCash started in 2004 as a Globe Telecom SMS money service — contemporary with M-Pesa and built on the same insight that the phone network reached further than the branch network.

Sources 35, 36

THB

Account-to-account payments took a higher share of e-commerce here than almost anywhere in the region, on a rail keyed to national ID and phone numbers.

1. PromptPayTop~2.1B transactions a month (March 2025), ~75M a day
2. TrueMoneyThe main wallet layered on top
3. LINE PayLINE Pay — the messaging app is near-universal here
4. Cardspaying businessesMinority share — A2A took 44% of e-commerce value in 2025

PromptPay launched in 2016 as part of Thailand's National e-Payment plan. It now links across borders to Singapore's PayNow, Malaysia's DuitNow, Indonesia's QRIS and Vietnam's VietQR.

Sources 37, 38

VND — Gold and dollars still do the work of a savings account.

Bank QR transfer went from novelty to street-food default in a few years, with wallets competing above it.

1. VietQRTopBank-app QR transfer, now the everyday default
2. MoMoThe largest standalone wallet
3. ZaloPayMessaging-app wallet
4. CashReceding quickly in cities

VietQR standardised what banks were already doing separately, and is one of the rails plugged into the region's cross-border QR network.

Sources 38, 39

MYR

A single national QR standard with super-app wallets on top — the regional pattern, executed early.

1. DuitNowTopNational instant transfer and QR standard
2. GrabPayGrabPay — wallet inside the super-app
3. Touch 'n Go eWalletGrew out of the toll-payment card

DuitNow is run by PayNet, Malaysia's shared payments network, and links across borders to Thailand's PromptPay and Indonesia's QRIS.

Sources 38, 40

SGD

Identity-keyed transfers — your national ID number can be your payment address — plus the region's densest set of cross-border QR links.

1. PayNowTopSend to a mobile number or NRIC across any participating bank
2. GrabPayGrabPay across the region
3. Cardspaying businessesHigh credit-card usage persists alongside A2A

The Association of Banks in Singapore launched PayNow in 2017. Its 2021 link to Thailand's PromptPay was among the first live cross-border instant payment connections anywhere.

Sources 41, 38

AUD

An email address or phone number as your account number, on a shared bank rail now carrying over 35% of account-to-account transactions.

1. PayIDTop25M+ PayIDs registered; ~2B real-time payments across the NPP in 2025
2. OskoThe overlay service that actually moves the money
3. Cardspaying businessesVery high contactless card usage at the till

The New Payments Platform went live in 2018, with PayID as the addressing layer and Osko as the payment service on top — the same separation of address, rail and product that UPI made famous.

Sources 42

SAR

One of the fastest cash-to-digital transitions anywhere: electronic payments hit 85% of retail transactions in 2025, up from 79% a year earlier.

1. madaToppaying businesses~93% of card payments run on the domestic scheme
2. STC PayThe leading local wallet
3. Apple CashUnusually high adoption, riding mada acceptance
4. TabbyBNPL, alongside Tamara

mada is the national card scheme; international cards are typically co-badged onto it, the same defensive design France used with Cartes Bancaires. SARIE provides the instant rail underneath.

Sources 43, 44

AED

A late but deliberate build-out: domestic card scheme, instant rail and wallets all launched within a couple of years of each other.

1. AaniTopInstant payment system — 12.5M users by early 2026
2. TabbyBNPL at checkout, with Tamara
3. Jaywanpaying businessesThe new domestic card scheme
4. Apple CashGlobal wallets are widely accepted

Aani launched in 2023 under the Central Bank's national payments strategy, alongside the Jaywan domestic card scheme — an explicit move to keep more of the payment stack onshore.

Sources 44

JOD

A small market that adopted alias-based instant transfer quickly once banks made it free and default in their apps.

1. CliQTopTransactions grew ~77% in a single half-year as adoption compounded
2. eFAWATEERcomThe bill-payment rail most Jordanians use monthly
3. CashStill significant outside Amman

CliQ launched in 2020, run by JoPACC, letting people send to a chosen alias instead of an IBAN — the same design pattern as PayID and Pix keys.

Sources 45

EGP — A parallel dollar rate has shadowed the official one through repeated devaluations.

Bank-account instant transfer and agent-network cash-in coexist, because a large share of the population is served by one but not the other.

1. InstaPayTop16M+ users; 1.1B transactions worth EGP 2.4T (to June 2025)
2. FawryThe kiosk and bill-payment network that reached the unbanked first
3. Mobile walletsTelco wallets growing fast alongside bank accounts
4. CashStill the base layer for much of the country

The Central Bank of Egypt launched InstaPay in 2022 and kept transfers free for years to drive adoption; fees only arrived in April 2025, and usage kept growing anyway.

Sources 46, 47

KES

The country that proved mobile money before smartphones existed. Mobile money penetration reached 91% by mid-2025; M-Pesa moves more value in a year than Kenya's GDP.

1. M-PesaTop~89% of Kenya's mobile money market; KSh 38.3T moved in FY2024/25
2. Airtel MoneyAirtel Money — roughly 11% and growing
3. Cardspaying businessesA minority rail, mostly urban and formal retail

In 2003 Vodafone's Nick Hughes won a £1m matching grant from the UK's DFID to help microfinance borrowers repay loans by phone. In the 2005 pilot users ignored that and started sending money to each other instead — so the team dropped the microfinance case and launched M-Pesa as person-to-person transfer in March 2007.

Sources 48, 49, 50

NGN — Dollars are the store of value; the naira is the medium of exchange.

Bank transfer is the everyday payment method — you send to an account number to buy lunch — and fintech wallets grew fastest when cash itself got scarce.

1. NIBSS Instant PaymentTop₦1.07 quadrillion in 2024, up 78.3%
2. OPay10M daily active users; part of a ₦71.5T mobile-money year
3. PalmPay~15M transactions a day
4. FlutterwaveMerchant and cross-border collection

NIBSS has run instant transfers since 2011. The 2023 currency redesign and cash shortage pushed millions onto OPay and PalmPay in months; a new National Payment Stack went live in November 2025.

Sources 51, 52

ZAR

The outlier in Sub-Saharan Africa: high banking penetration meant cards got there first, and the instant rail is the challenger rather than the incumbent.

1. CardsToppaying businessesDebit and credit still carry formal retail
2. PayShapR100B and 136M transactions since its 2023 launch; 4.5M ShapIDs
3. CashDominant in the informal economy
4. FlutterwaveCross-border merchant rails

BankservAfrica launched PayShap in 2023 with ShapID aliases — a late entrant deliberately modelled on rails that had already worked elsewhere.

Sources 53

XOF — The West African CFA franc, shared by eight countries and pegged to the euro.

Price, not features, was the wedge: flat 1% transfers and free deposits forced the whole market's fees down.

1. WaveTopPart of a ~23M-user base across francophone West Africa
2. Orange MoneyThe telco incumbent it undercut
3. CashStill the fallback outside the agent network

Wave launched with a deliberately blunt proposition — a 1% fee against incumbents charging several times that — and grew on agent density rather than app polish.

Sources 54

XOF — The West African CFA franc, shared by eight countries and pegged to the euro.

A telco-wallet market that a price-led challenger cracked open, in a currency zone (XOF) that spans eight countries.

1. WaveTopSecond core market in Wave's ~23M-user footprint
2. Orange MoneyTelco wallet with deep agent coverage
3. MTN MoMoThe other major telco wallet

Mobile money in francophone West Africa grew out of telco agent networks rather than banks — the same structural reason it grew in Kenya.

Sources 54

GHS

One telco wallet with enough agent density to become the default account, in a market where bank branches never reached that far.

1. MTN MoMoTopUsed by close to 60% of Ghanaian adults
2. Airtel MoneyAirtelTigo Money — the main telco challenger
3. FlutterwaveMerchant collection and cross-border
4. CashStill the base layer outside the agent network

MTN built out agent distribution through the 2010s; MoMo now spans 10+ African markets with 69.5M monthly active users and roughly half a trillion dollars moved in 2025.

Sources 62

TZS

Unusually competitive for East Africa: three wallets that can all pay each other, rather than one that everyone must join.

1. M-PesaTopVodacom's M-Pesa — the largest of several interoperable wallets
2. Airtel MoneyAirtel Money, fully interoperable since 2021
3. Mixx by YasFormerly Tigo Pesa

Tanzania's 2021 interoperability framework let M-Pesa, Airtel Money and Tigo Pesa transfer between each other directly — an early example of regulators forcing wallets to interconnect. Subscriptions grew 92% between 2020 and 2024.

Sources 62, 63

UGX

One of the fastest-maturing mobile money markets in East Africa, helped along by fees among the region's lowest.

1. MTN MoMoTopThe larger half of a two-telco market
2. Airtel MoneyAirtel Money — the other half
3. CashStill dominant in rural trade

Uganda passed 28 million registered mobile money accounts and $32 billion in transaction value in 2023, with average fees near 1.2% — cheap enough that small transfers make sense.

Sources 62

ETB — Floated in July 2024 after decades of a managed rate and a wide parallel market.

A state telecom monopoly turned the phone network into the country's largest financial account in under five years.

1. telebirrTop54.8M users; 2.38 trillion birr moved in FY2024/25
2. CashStill the default for most everyday trade
3. Bank appsCBE Birr and bank wallets, well behind telebirr

Ethio Telecom launched telebirr in May 2021 and signed up a million users in its first week — the fastest mobile money launch on the continent, in a market that had almost no digital payments before it.

Sources 64, 65

PKR

Telco wallets got there first and the central bank built the free rail underneath afterwards, rather than the other way round.

1. EasypaisaTop59M registered users; ~20M monthly active (Dec 2025)
2. JazzCash40M+ users; the closest rival
3. RaastState Bank instant rail — transaction count more than doubled in FY25
4. CashStill carries most retail

Easypaisa launched in 2009 out of Telenor Pakistan, years before most of the region had mobile money. Raast arrived in 2021 to make bank and wallet transfers free and instant, which is now steadily commoditising what the wallets charged for.

Sources 66, 67

BDT

A phone number is the bank account for most of the country: registered mobile financial services accounts now exceed 200 million.

1. bKashTop83M+ customers — the country's first tech unicorn
2. NagadThe state-backed challenger
3. RocketDutch-Bangla Bank's earlier entrant
4. CashCash-in/cash-out at agents is the wallet's on-ramp

bKash launched in 2011 as a BRAC Bank venture and became the default rail for wages, remittances and government stipends — it's the most-used channel for social security allowances and education stipends.

Sources 68, 69

EUR

The clearest case anywhere of a foreign challenger bank becoming a country's default: 'Revolut me' is simply how Irish people say it.

1. RevolutTop3.3M customers — roughly 80% of Irish adults
2. Bank transfer (SEPA)IBAN transfer for anything the app doesn't cover
3. PayPalOnline checkout
4. Cardspaying businessesContactless debit at the till

Revolut passed three million Irish customers in late 2024 and kept growing — including 429,000 under-18 accounts, about a third of all children in Ireland. Irish balances held on the app rose 56% in 2025, which is the tell that it stopped being a secondary card.

Sources 70, 71

EUR

A shared interbank network so complete that Portugal skipped the wallet wars entirely — one app, backed by 94% of issuing banks.

1. MB WAYTop6M+ users — about 75% of the banked population
2. MultibancoThe older shared network; ~25% of online transactions
3. PayPalCross-border online
4. Bank transfer (SEPA)IBAN transfer

SIBS has run Multibanco as a single national network since the 1980s, famous for ATMs that do everything from taxes to concert tickets. MB WAY (2014) put phone-number transfers on top of it.

Sources 72, 73

EUR

Digital-government poster child, but paid for with cards: instant transfer is the plumbing, not the consumer brand.

1. CardsToppaying businessesVisa and Mastercard preferred by ~7 in 10 online
2. Bank transfer (SEPA)SEPA instant credit transfer, settled in seconds
3. Bank linkPay-from-account redirects, a Baltic staple

Estonian banks were among the first in Europe to adhere to SEPA Instant Credit Transfer in 2017, settling interbank transfers in under five seconds through RT1.

Sources 74, 75

RUB · USDT — Sanctions pushed cross-border settlement onto stablecoins; domestic spending stays in roubles.

A payments system rebuilt behind a wall: when Visa and Mastercard left in 2022 the domestic card scheme and the central bank's instant rail were already there to absorb it, and crypto became the way out to the rest of the world.

1. MirToppaying businessesCards carry 75%+ of purchases, almost all on the domestic Mir scheme
2. SBPCentral-bank instant rail: phone-number transfers and QR at the till, 200+ banks
3. SberPayWith Mir Pay and SBPay, over 30% of transactions in 2025
4. TronUSDT on Tron settles cross-border trade the banking system can't
5. CashReceding — close to 80% of purchases are now cashless

Mir was built after the 2014 sanctions scare and SBP followed in 2019 — both looked redundant until March 2022, when the international schemes stopped processing and they became the only rails left. Cross-border is the harder half: a Bank of Russia licensing regime opens in September 2026 for crypto exchanges and brokers to settle foreign trade, while crypto payments between Russians stay banned. Blockchain analysts have traced billions in sanctions-linked stablecoin flows, overwhelmingly Tether's USDT.

Sources 57, 58, 59, 60, 61

TRY · USD — Households hold hard currency and gold against the lira — roughly a third of deposits.

An unusually card-heavy market — instalment plans on credit cards are a national habit — with an instant rail layered underneath since 2021.

1. CardsToppaying businessesCredit and debit dominate, on Visa, Mastercard and domestic Troy
2. FASTCentral bank instant rail, live since January 2021
3. PaparaThe leading standalone wallet
4. PaycellTurkcell's carrier wallet

Türkiye built its own card scheme, Troy, in 2016 to keep domestic transactions off international networks, then added FAST for real-time transfers. Note that PayPal has not operated here since 2016.

Sources 76, 77

ILS

Paying someone by phone number is the default here: the two banks behind those wallets are also the only channel Palestinian banks have to the rest of the world.

1. BitTop~3M users; around 80% of app-based P2P transfers
2. PayBoxDiscount Bank's rival, strong for group collections
3. Apple CashVery fast adoption at the till
4. Cardspaying businessesLocal credit companies still carry retail

Bank Hapoalim launched Bit in 2017 and opened it to customers of every bank; it stayed free until January 2025, when fees arrived for anyone receiving more than ₪25,000 a year, a threshold about 90% of users never reach. The same two institutions behind this market's wallets — Hapoalim, and Discount behind PayBox — are the only Israeli banks holding correspondent relationships with Palestinian banks, and those relationships exist only for as long as Israel's finance ministry renews an indemnity covering them. In June 2025, hours after the UK and four other states sanctioned him, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich ordered that indemnity cancelled; the Palestine Monetary Authority warned the move could halt food and fuel imports and collapse the Palestinian Authority, and the waiver was subsequently extended to the end of 2026. Israel also collects customs and VAT on the PA's behalf and has withheld those clearance revenues in full since May 2025 — roughly $4.5B by year end — against which the PA cut public salaries to 50–60%. So the contrast is not incidental: on one side of the line, contactless everywhere and a wallet almost every adult has; a few kilometres away, about 30% of adults hold a bank account and roughly 95% of transactions are cash.

Sources 78, 228, 216, 217, 218, 219, 225

CLP — Contracts and mortgages are written in UF, an inflation-indexed unit of account.

Card-first by Latin American standards, with wallets and account-to-account transfer growing fastest underneath.

1. Webpay / RedcompraTopTransbank's card rails carry most retail
2. Mercado PagoThe largest wallet
3. MACHPrepaid wallet popular with younger users
4. Transferencia (TEI)Bank transfer, common for larger amounts

Transbank, owned by the banks, ran card acquiring as a near-monopoly for decades, which is why Chile digitised early on cards rather than on wallets.

Sources 79, 80

UYU · USD — Property and cars are priced in dollars; wages and groceries in pesos.

Small, highly banked, and still running a large cash-voucher habit: you can buy online and pay at a kiosk.

1. Mercado PagoTop77% of online wallet payment volume
2. Abitab / RedPagosCash-payment networks used to settle online orders
3. PrexDigital account with a Mastercard attached

Uruguay's 2014 financial inclusion law pushed wages and pensions onto electronic accounts, which is why card and wallet penetration outran its neighbours.

Sources 81

CRC · USD — Dollar accounts and dollar pricing are routine alongside the colón.

The quiet success story of the Americas: a central-bank phone-number rail that a small country adopted almost completely.

1. SINPE MóvilTopOver 80% of people aged 15+; ~65M transactions a month
2. Cardspaying businessesStill standard in formal retail
3. CashFalling — cash withdrawals drop as SINPE use rises

Launched by the Banco Central de Costa Rica in 2015, SINPE Móvil went from 52% of over-15s in 2022 to more than 80% by 2025 — adoption took off during the 2020 lockdowns and never slowed.

Sources 82

USD — Dollarised outright in 2000 after the sucre collapsed — there is no local unit.

A dollarised, cash-heavy economy where one bank's QR wallet is doing most of the work of digitising everyday payments.

1. DeUnaTopBanco Pichincha's wallet; 500k+ affiliated businesses
2. CashStill the predominant form of payment
3. Cardspaying businessesConcentrated in formal urban retail

Ecuador uses the US dollar, so it never had a central-bank currency to build a rail around; the push came from a commercial bank instead.

Sources 83, 84

NZD

Tapped and banked, with no breakout P2P app — New Zealanders just send a bank transfer, the way the UK does.

1. Contactless cardsToppaying businessesThe preferred method — used as much as EFTPOS, twice as much as cash
2. EFTPOSpaying businessesThe domestic debit network, free at the till since the 1980s
3. Bank transferStandard for invoices and person-to-person
4. Apple CashGrowing share of contactless

EFTPOS launched nationally in the 1980s and was free to use, which made New Zealand one of the earliest countries to largely stop using cash — and left little room for a wallet to sell itself on convenience.

Sources 85, 86

HKD — Pegged to the US dollar since 1983.

Layer on layer: a 1990s transit card that became money, two mainland super-app wallets, and a modern instant rail tying them together.

1. FPSTop17M+ registrations in a city of 7.5M people
2. OctopusThe 1997 stored-value card, still everywhere
3. AlipayAlipayHK — around 42% of wallet market share
4. WeChat PayWeChat Pay HK — 5M+ registered users
5. UnionPayCard rail, especially for mainland visitors

Octopus launched in 1997 for the MTR and became one of the world's first widely used contactless payment systems — years ahead of anywhere else. The HKMA's Faster Payment System arrived in 2018 and is now how the wallets get topped up.

Sources 87, 88

VES · USD · USDT — The bolívar still moves the money, but it stopped being the unit of account years ago.

One of the most digital retail markets in the Americas, built not on convenience but on the fact that carrying enough banknotes stopped being possible.

1. Pago MóvilTop41% of all banking operations; 376M transfers in April 2025 alone
2. Cardspaying businessesPoint-of-sale terminals carry another 47%
3. TronUSDT on Tron is what people hold — reported crypto-dollarisation
4. Zelleperson to personHow dollars actually arrive from relatives abroad

Pago Móvil launched in 2017 as an interbank transfer by phone number, just as hyperinflation was making cash absurd — a 100-bolívar note eventually bought nothing at all. Adoption grew 68,000% in eight years, and today a street vendor with no terminal still takes a transfer.

Sources 89, 90

BOB — Pegged to the dollar since 2011, with a parallel rate opening up as reserves fell.

A single mandatory QR standard, imposed on every bank at once, took a cash economy digital in about four years.

1. QR SimpleTop92% of digital payments (H1 2025); 891M transactions in 2025
2. CashStill the default in a heavily informal economy
3. Cardspaying businessesA minority rail, concentrated in formal retail

The Banco Central de Bolivia made one interoperable QR compulsory across the whole financial system rather than letting banks build rival wallets. QR payments grew 131% in 2025 — about 1,700 payments a minute.

Sources 91, 92

USD — The balboa exists only as coins; the US dollar has circulated as legal tender since 1904.

One retail bank's P2P app became the national default, in a country that never needed to solve currency risk because it uses the dollar outright.

1. YappyTop~1.6M users in a country of 4.5M
2. Cardspaying businessesStandard in formal retail and online
3. CashStill ordinary outside the capital
4. NequiBancolombia's wallet, crossed over from Colombia

Banco General launched Yappy in 2018 and later opened it to rival banks — the same consortium logic as Zelle, except it started as one bank's product and the others joined afterwards.

Sources 93, 94

UAH

A neobank market that ran ahead of most of Europe, and kept running through a full-scale invasion — card payments are the ordinary way to buy anything.

1. CardsToppaying businesses64.5% of card transaction value was cashless in 2024
2. monobank9.77M active cards — second in the country
3. Privat24PrivatBank is the largest issuer and acquirer
4. CashStill a third of card-related activity by value

PrivatBank's Privat24 made Ukraine unusually card-first in the 2010s; monobank launched in 2017 as a branchless app on Universal Bank's licence and reached the country's second-largest card base without ever opening a branch.

Sources 95, 96

BYN

Almost everything you owe — utilities, fines, school meals, a phone bill — is paid by punching a code into one state-run directory.

1. ERIPTopThe central bank's single billing space — 24 banks, 13,000 service points
2. BELKARTpaying businessesThe domestic card scheme — 56.1% of cashless turnover
3. CashStill routine outside Minsk

The National Bank launched ERIP in 2008 as a single settlement and information space, so that any biller could be reached from any bank's app. It is closer to a national bill-payment index than to a wallet, and there is no consumer brand competing with it.

Sources 97, 98

EUR

A domestic debit scheme so complete that international cards are the exception, with the P2P app bolted onto the same brand rather than competing with it.

1. BancontactToppaying businesses~83% of all card transactions; 2.5B payments with Payconiq in 2024
2. PayconiqThe QR and P2P layer — 471M smartphone payments in 2024
3. Bank transfer (SEPA)SEPA instant for everything that isn't retail
4. PayPalCommon for cross-border online

Bancontact and Mister Cash were rival bank networks that merged in the 1980s; Payconiq arrived in 2015 as a separate QR wallet and the two companies merged in 2018, which is why Belgium's card and its phone payments share one name.

Sources 99, 100

EUR

A P2P rail the state decided everyone would use: since December 2025 every business has been legally required to accept it.

1. IRISTop4.6M+ users; €10.9B moved in 2025, up 70%
2. Cardspaying businessesCard use was pushed up hard by tax-receipt rules
3. CashRetreating, but slowly, and faster in Athens than outside it

IRIS runs on DIAS, the Greek banks' clearing house, and settles by phone number or tax ID. Making acceptance mandatory for businesses — rather than waiting for adoption — is a policy few other countries have tried, and it followed a decade of using card receipts to fight tax evasion.

Sources 101, 102

IRR — Prices are quoted in toman — ten rials — and shadowed by a parallel dollar rate.

Cut off from Visa and Mastercard since 2012, Iran built the entire card stack domestically — and almost every adult carries a debit card that works nowhere else on earth.

1. ShetabToppaying businessesThe central bank's interbank card switch, carrying tens of billions of transactions a year
2. Shaparakpaying businessesThe regulated acceptance network layered over Shetab
3. CashStill ordinary, and heavy — inflation has bulked up the notes

Shetab went live in 2002 to force every Iranian bank onto one switch, years before sanctions made that a necessity rather than a convenience. Shaparak was added in 2012 as the supervisory layer over card acceptance, and in November 2024 Shetab was interconnected with Russia's Mir.

Sources 103, 104

IQD · USD — Dollars do the saving and much of the wholesale trade; dinars do the shopping.

Digital payment arrived through the payroll rather than the shop: the state moved salaries onto cards, and everything else is still cash.

1. CashTopStill how most of the country is paid and pays
2. Qi Cardpaying businessesThe largest issuer — how state salaries and pensions arrive
3. Zain Cash1.2M+ users on a telco wallet, no bank account needed
4. FastPayOne of 17 licensed digital wallets

Qi Card began in 2007 as a partnership between Al-Rafidain Bank and the private sector to pay public-sector salaries and pensions with biometric authentication — in a country where identity fraud in the payroll was the problem being solved.

Sources 105, 106

MAD

The clearest counter-example on this map: the infrastructure was built, the wallets were issued, and cash still won.

1. CashTopCurrency in circulation hit a record MAD 491B in 2025, up 18.5%
2. Cardspaying businesses22.6M cards issued, but mostly used to withdraw cash
3. Mobile wallets13.7M registered; 19.7M payments in 2025

Bank Al-Maghrib pushed hard on mobile payment from 2018 and cut card acceptance fees, yet notes in circulation kept climbing. Twenty-two million cards against twenty million mobile payments a year is the whole story — the plastic is mostly an ATM key.

Sources 107

DZD — A parallel euro market has run alongside the official rate for decades.

The post office, not the banks, is the country's largest payment provider — and its card outnumbers every bank card combined.

1. CashTopCash on delivery is still the norm for e-commerce
2. Edahabiapaying businessesAlgérie Poste's card — ~5M in circulation
3. CIBpaying businessesThe interbank card scheme run by SATIM, ~2M cards
4. BaridiMobAlgérie Poste's app, the main way the card is used

Algérie Poste has always reached further than the banking system, so when the state wanted a payment card in everyone's hand it issued Edahabia through the post. The interbank scheme, CIB, has less than half as many cards.

Sources 108

KWD

One shared bank-owned switch handles nearly everything, which is why a Kuwaiti debit card works everywhere locally and a foreign one often doesn't.

1. KNETToppaying businessesOver 85% of all transactions run on the domestic switch
2. Apple CashVery high contactless use on top of KNET cards
3. CashA small residual, mostly informal trade

KNET was founded in 1992 by Kuwait's banks as a single national switch, early enough that no international scheme ever established a domestic foothold to displace.

Sources 109

BHD

A small market with an unusually complete national stack: one operator runs the instant rail, the bill payments and the wallet everyone has.

1. BenefitPayTop466M transactions worth BD 10.2B in 2025
2. Fawri+467.9M instant transfers in 2025; cap raised to BD 3,000/day
3. Cardspaying businessesContactless is standard at the till

BENEFIT was set up by Bahrain's banks and the central bank, and built Fawri (same-day), Fawri+ (instant) and Fawateer (bills) as one family — then put a consumer app on top. Together they cleared close to $100B in 2025 in a country of 1.5 million people.

Sources 110, 109

KZT

The most concentrated payment market on this map: one super-app is the bank, the marketplace, the P2P rail and the government-services portal.

1. Kaspi.kzTop~14.8M monthly users — close to 80% of adults; $97.3B payment volume in FY2025
2. Cardspaying businessesVisa and Mastercard, moving a fraction of Kaspi's volume
3. CashNow a minority, and shrinking fast

Kaspi started as a struggling retail bank, pivoted to instalment lending in shops, and used that merchant network to bootstrap payments. Its network now handles about 2.5× the volume of Visa and Mastercard combined inside Kazakhstan.

Sources 111, 112

UZS

Two state-born card switches at the bottom, a handful of app brands fighting over the top — and the top three take 84% of it.

1. ClickTop36.7% of non-bank online transactions (Jan 2025)
2. Uzcard / Humopaying businessesThe two domestic card switches everything settles on
3. Payme23.8% — second among the non-bank apps
4. CashStill heavy outside Tashkent

Uzcard was the monopoly processor until Humo was created in 2018 to compete with it; Humo was then privatised in January 2025 for $65M. The consumer apps — Click, Payme, Uzum — are all layers over those same two rails.

Sources 113, 114

AMD

A fintech sector of 200-odd companies sitting on top of a population that is still, in large part, paid and spending in cash.

1. IdramTopOver 90% of QR payments; 1.5M+ users
2. TelcellThe rival wallet and terminal network
3. CashNearly 40% of adults made no recent digital payment

Idram grew out of Armenia's self-service payment terminals — the physical kiosks where people paid utility bills — and carried that habit into a phone. It now takes Alipay+ scans from visiting tourists on the same QR codes.

Sources 115, 116

AZN

A market that went from cash-first to almost entirely electronic inside a decade, led by a wallet that only launched in 2022.

1. m10Top5M+ users in a country of 10M
2. Cardspaying businesses91% of payments were electronic by 2025
3. CashThe remaining share, mostly informal

m10 was built by PashaPay and hit half the country's population in about three years, helped by a central-bank strategy that made digitisation an explicit policy target rather than an industry hope.

Sources 117, 118

MMK — The official kyat rate and the street rate have diverged sharply since 2021.

Skipped cards entirely: 4G arrived, and a cash economy went straight to wallets without stopping at plastic.

1. KBZPayTop~19M users — the country's largest wallet
2. Wave MoneyUnmatched agent reach in a two-thirds rural country
3. CashStill the rural default beyond the agent network

KBZ Bank launched KBZPay in 2018 with full e-KYC onboarding and passed 3.5 million users in its first year. It kept growing through the 2021 coup and the conflict that followed, which is when carrying cash became genuinely dangerous.

Sources 119

KHR · USD — The dollar still accounts for about 70% of transaction value despite a decade of de-dollarisation policy.

The only central bank in the world running its retail rail on a blockchain — and the only one clearing two currencies at once because its own is optional.

1. BakongTop303M riel transactions in H1 2025 (+62%), plus 240M in dollars
2. KHQRThe national QR standard riding on Bakong, live since 2022
3. CashBoth currencies, often in the same till

The National Bank of Cambodia launched Bakong in 2020 on Hyperledger Iroha, partly to give unbanked Cambodians a wallet and partly as a lever against dollarisation. Riel volumes are growing fast; dollars still carry about 70% of the value.

Sources 120, 121

TWD

A messaging app won the payments market, and the credit card never went away — Taiwan runs both at once rather than replacing one with the other.

1. LINE PayTopLINE Pay: 13.1M registered users, NT$756B in 2024 — 3× every regulated e-payment operator combined
2. JKOPay6.93M registered users
3. iPASS6.98M users — a transit card that became a wallet
4. CashNight markets and food stalls still often insist on it

LINE Pay's advantage was never the payment, it was the 21 million people already in the LINE app. Its co-branded credit cards then tied the wallet to the card rails instead of competing with them.

Sources 122

NPR — Pegged to the Indian rupee since 1993.

One sticker on the counter, any app: the central bank forced QR interoperability instead of letting the wallets fence off their merchants.

1. FonepayTopThe interbank QR network — over 1M scans in a single day
2. eSewaThe oldest wallet and still the most trusted
3. IME KhaltiFormed when Khalti and IME Pay merged in 2025
4. CashStill dominant outside the Kathmandu valley

eSewa launched in 2009, years before smartphones were common in Nepal. The turn came when Nepal Rastra Bank required wallets, banking apps and QR codes to interoperate, which made Fonepay's network — not any one wallet — the thing merchants actually adopt.

Sources 123

USD · SOS — An estimated 95%+ of physical shillings in circulation are counterfeit, which is why almost nobody uses them.

Plausibly the most cashless country on earth, and not by design: the currency broke, and mobile money filled the hole left behind.

1. EVC PlusTop3M+ users; 92% of them transact daily
2. CashUS dollars where notes are used at all
3. HawalaStill the route for money coming in from the diaspora

Hormuud launched EVC Plus in 2011, free to use, into a country with almost no functioning banks and a shilling nobody trusted. Over two-thirds of all payments now run on mobile money; the central bank only issued its first mobile money licence in 2021, a decade after the fact.

Sources 124, 125

SDG — Inflation and the war have made carrying notes both risky and impractical.

One bank's app became national infrastructure by surviving: after the branches were destroyed, it was what remained.

1. BankakTop~7M users; 50M+ transactions since the war began
2. CashScarce — bank vaults in Khartoum were looted
3. HawalaHow remittances reach areas the banking system doesn't

Bank of Khartoum built Bankak in 2014 as an ordinary mobile-banking app. When war broke out in April 2023 and the banking system in the capital collapsed, app activations rose 85% and Bankak became the way people bought groceries, paid for transport and received money from abroad.

Sources 126, 127

AOA

A national ATM network that grew an app, and the app promptly ate the network — over 60% of transactions are now digital channels.

1. Multicaixa ExpressTop~62% of all Multicaixa network operations; 2.1B transactions in 2025
2. Multicaixapaying businessesThe underlying interbank card and ATM network
3. CashStill the informal economy's default

EMIS has run the shared Multicaixa network since the 1990s; Multicaixa Express put instant transfers and QR on a phone and became the fastest-growing channel on it, moving 19.7 trillion kwanza in 2025.

Sources 128, 129

USD · ZWG — Formally multi-currency: the dollar carries most formal trade, the gold-backed ZiG is the sixth local unit since 2008.

Mobile money became the currency substitute during hyperinflation, then had to learn to hold dollars when the local unit failed again.

1. EcoCashTop10M+ users, and effectively the whole mobile money market
2. CashUS dollar notes, increasingly the formal-trade default
3. Cardspaying businessesA thin layer over a mostly informal economy

Econet launched EcoCash in 2011 and it reached near-total market share as the Zimbabwe dollar collapsed — then was blamed for the crash, restricted, and later allowed back. It is now expanding US-dollar transactions because that is what people actually transact in.

Sources 130, 131

CDF · USD — Heavily dollarised; mobile money is now being settled in dollars as well as francs.

A country with almost no bank branches and three telco wallets competing hard — and the first big African market to settle mobile money in dollars.

1. M-PesaTop~51% of mobile money subscriptions; 43.4% of transactions
2. Airtel Money40.8% of transactions and the fastest-growing — revenue up 42% in 2025
3. Orange MoneyThe third network, around 17% of subscriptions
4. CashDollars and francs, in a country the size of Western Europe

Vodacom brought M-Pesa across from Kenya and still leads on subscriptions, but Airtel Money has been closing on transaction share for years. Dollar-denominated mobile money is being tried here first precisely because the franc is not what people save in.

Sources 132, 133

XOF — The West African CFA franc, shared by eight countries and pegged to the euro.

Phone credit turned into a bank account: mobile money reaches far more people here than any branch network ever did.

1. Orange MoneyTopPart of a ~49M active-customer base across Orange's markets
2. Moov MoneyThe rival telco wallet
3. CashStill dominant outside Bamako

Orange Money launched in Côte d'Ivoire in 2008 and spread across francophone West Africa on the back of Orange's network footprint — Mali among the earliest markets. It now operates in 17 countries.

Sources 134, 135, 136

XOF — The West African CFA franc, shared by eight countries and pegged to the euro.

Two mobile networks, two wallets, and an agent in every market town — the West African pattern, with almost no card layer underneath.

1. Orange MoneyTopA major player in the market, upgraded to a new platform in 2025
2. Moov MoneyThe other half of a two-telco market
3. CashThe default for most day-to-day trade

West Africa contributed 21% of the world's new mobile money accounts in 2024, second only to East Africa. Orange rebuilt its Burkinabè platform on Comviva's mobiquity Pay in 2025 to add credit and savings on top of transfers.

Sources 134, 136

XOF — The West African CFA franc, shared by eight countries and pegged to the euro.

One of the lowest account-ownership rates anywhere, and mobile money is essentially the only formal financial product growing.

1. Orange MoneyTopOne of Orange's 17 mobile money markets
2. CashStill overwhelmingly how the country transacts
3. Moov MoneyThe competing telco wallet

Fewer than half of adults in low-income economies hold any financial account. Where account growth is happening at all, the World Bank's 2025 Findex attributes most of it to mobile money rather than banks — Niger is a clear case.

Sources 135, 231, 136

XAF — The Central African CFA franc — a separate currency from West Africa's, at the same euro peg.

The two continental giants — Orange and MTN — competing head to head in one market, which is unusual and has kept fees down.

1. Orange MoneyTopOne of Orange's largest African mobile money markets
2. MTN MoMoThe other half of a hard-fought duopoly
3. CashStill the default in most retail

Cameroon is one of the few countries where Orange Money and MTN MoMo are both at full scale. Sub-Saharan Africa now holds 1.1 billion registered mobile money accounts, over two-thirds of the global total.

Sources 134, 136

ILS · JOD · USD — There is no Palestinian currency. The 1994 Paris Protocol admits the shekel, dinar, dollar and euro; the shekel dominates.

The occupation is the payment system: no currency of its own, no route to the world except through the banks of the state occupying it, and in Gaza no banknotes at all since October 2023.

1. CashTop~95% of transactions; only about 30% of eligible adults hold a bank account
2. JAWWAL PayOne of only two e-payment providers still reachable in Gaza
3. PalPayBank of Palestine's wallet and agent network; ~1,000 Gaza merchants onboarded in 2025
4. Cash brokersGaza's informal rail — commission on your own money hit 55% in 2025

Every mechanism here is downstream of a legal situation that international bodies have now named. The ICJ's advisory opinion of 19 July 2024 found Israel's continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful and held that its legislation and measures breach the prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid. In September 2025 the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, finding four of the five acts defined by the 1948 Convention — a conclusion Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli organisation B'Tselem had each reached independently. Israel rejects those findings and the ICJ's contentious genocide case is not yet decided on the merits. The plumbing: the Paris Economic Protocol of 1994 left currency to Israel, so the Palestine Monetary Authority has spent thirty years as a monetary authority that issues nothing, and Palestinian banks can reach the outside world only through Israeli correspondents. When those banks refused to take surplus cash, roughly 18 billion shekels — near $6B — piled up idle in Palestinian vaults, which is why the PMA said in 2025 it was studying moving off the shekel altogether. In Gaza no new banknotes have entered since October 2023: the notes still circulating are worn past the point merchants will accept them, brokers charge up to 55% to hand over your own money, and repairing torn notes with tape became a paid trade.

Sources 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224

GNF

A market where the telco wallet is not competing with banking — it is the first formal financial account most people have ever had.

1. Orange MoneyTopOrange is particularly strong here among its francophone markets
2. MTN MoMoThe challenger network
3. CashStill how most transactions happen

Guinea is named among Orange Money's strongest francophone markets. Across sub-Saharan Africa, $1.4 trillion flowed through mobile money in 2025 and the region remains the world's most active by a wide margin.

Sources 134, 136

MNT

Skipped the card era outright: 98% of the country's digital transactions are a QR code, a bank transfer or mobile money.

1. QPayTopThe dominant QR network — 200,000+ Mongolian merchants
2. SocialPayGolomt Bank's wallet, first here to pay on international QR
3. Khan BankIts digital network reaches 60% of households
4. CashRetreating fast, and faster in Ulaanbaatar than outside it

Mongolia never built a card habit, so QR arrived into an open field. Khan Bank reports that 98% of digital transactions run on QR, transfers or mobile money, and its own network reaches 60% of households; QPay built the merchant side to over 200,000 acceptance points. In 2024 Khan Bank connected to Alipay+, so twelve foreign wallets now scan the same codes — a tourism play in a country where the visitor economy is seasonal and large.

Sources 137, 138, 139

MRU

A bank, not a telco, owns three-quarters of this country's digital payments — the reverse of the pattern everywhere else in the Sahel.

1. BankilyTop77% of digital transactions (central bank, June 2024 – May 2025)
2. SedadSecond at 10%
3. MasrviThird at 8.84%
4. CashStill the default outside Nouakchott

Across West Africa mobile money is a mobile-operator business. Mauritania went the other way: Banque Populaire de Mauritanie built Bankily as bank-issued mobile money, cashed in and out through its own agents, branches and ATMs, and took 77% of digital transactions by the central bank's own count. Its two rivals together hold under a fifth.

Sources 140, 141

AFN · USD — Dollars arrive with aid and remittances; afghanis do the shopping.

The one digital rail that works here had to be designed for a country that can lose the internet nationwide overnight.

1. CashTopThe banking system barely functions; notes and hawala carry the economy
2. HawalaHow aid money enters — broker fees have reached ~10%
3. HesabPayStablecoin-backed cards built to work with no internet at all
4. APSDa Afghanistan Bank's national switch, still being rebuilt

With the banking system largely cut off, humanitarian agencies move money through informal transfer agents — hawala brokers whose fees have reached around 10% at the worst moments. HesabPay's answer was cards that hold value offline and sync over satellite when they can, which mattered acutely when a nationwide internet shutdown stopped banks, businesses and every conventional digital payment at once. Da Afghanistan Bank's APS switch exists and is being brought toward international standards, but it is not yet what the country runs on.

Sources 145, 146, 147, 148

ISK

The most card-dependent country in Europe, and nothing displaced the card: no breakout wallet ever needed to exist.

1. CardsToppaying businesses371 card payments per person a year — the highest in Europe
2. Bank transferStandard for invoices and paying people directly
3. CashDown to roughly 2.3% of GDP

Iceland's card use has topped the European tables for years — 210 debit payments per person annually, 371 counting credit — in a country small enough that acceptance became universal early. Cash is down to about 2.3% of GDP. Where Sweden and Norway grew Swish and Vipps to sit on top of their card rails, Iceland simply kept tapping.

Sources 151, 152

MZN

Three telco wallets the central bank forced to talk to each other, on a base where mobile money accounts now outnumber people.

1. M-PesaTop6M+ active users and 54,000 agents
2. e-MolaMovitel's wallet, launched 2017
3. mKeshThe oldest of the three, from 2011
4. CashStill how most rural trade settles

mKesh came first in 2011, Vodacom's M-Pesa in 2013, Movitel's e-Mola in 2017 — and for a decade none of them could pay the others. The Banco de Moçambique interconnected all three in 2022, and by its September 2025 newsletter the three carried more than 12 million active accounts, with penetration past 100% of the population at the end of 2024. M-Pesa leads on both users and agent reach.

Sources 142, 143, 144

ZMW

Competition drove the price of a domestic transfer to zero — and then the state put a levy on top of it.

1. Airtel MoneyTopOne of two dominant wallets; domestic sends are free
2. MTN MoMoThe other half of the duopoly, also free domestically
3. Zamtel KwachaThe state operator's third wallet, free under K150
4. CashAverage mobile money transfer is about one dollar

Airtel Money and MTN MoMo compete hard enough that same-network domestic transfers are free on both, with Zamtel Kwacha free under K150 — unusual in a region where cash-out fees are the business model. The Mobile Money Transaction Levy Act 2024, as amended in 2025 and effective 1 January 2026, reintroduces a cost by statute: a flat K2.00 on sends between K1,000 and K3,000. The average transfer is about K10, which is roughly a dollar.

Sources 149, 150, 136

LYD — The central bank split in two in 2014 under rival governments; a parallel rate has run alongside the official one ever since.

Adoption driven by scarcity rather than convenience — and the wallets people fled to still cannot pay each other.

1. CashTopQueues for your own salary are what drove people off it
2. SadadThe telco Madar's wallet
3. EdfaliBank of Commerce & Development's — Arabic for 'pay me'
4. MobiCashWahda Bank's; e-payments overall rose 186% in 2025 to LD 389B

Libya's central bank split in two in 2014, one half under each rival government, and the cash crisis that followed left people queuing at branches unable to draw their own salaries. That, not convenience, is what created the digital market: e-payments rose 186% in 2025 to LD 389 billion on the central bank's own count. But each wallet belongs to a different institution — Sadad to the telco Madar, Edfali to the Bank of Commerce & Development, MobiCash to Wahda Bank — and none of them interoperate, so you still find an agent or an ATM to get money in and out.

Sources 153, 154, 155

MGA

Interoperability by phone prefix: the number you dial tells the network which rival to route your money to.

1. MVolaTopTelma's wallet, the best-documented and most used of the three
2. Orange MoneySecond network, routed by the 032 and 037 prefixes
3. Airtel MoneyThird, on 033 — all three interoperate in every direction
4. Cash~15,000 cash-out points exist because cash is still the endpoint

Madagascar's three wallets are divided by mobile prefix — MVola on 034 and 038, Orange Money on 032 and 037, Airtel Money on 033 — and unusually for the region they interoperate multidirectionally, routed off the recipient's number. Roughly 15,000 withdrawal points sit behind them, because cash remains the endpoint even when the transfer is digital. In late 2024 all three operators publicly objected to a new tax on mobile money, the levy governments reach for once a rail becomes indispensable.

Sources 156, 157

YER · SAR · USD — Two authorities issue notes inscribed 'Central Bank of Yemen', and each treats the other's as illegitimate.

The hardest question here isn't how to move money but whose money it is: two authorities issue notes under the same central bank's name.

1. CashTopThe rial hit ~2,150 to the dollar in January 2025
2. HawalaCarries household remittances; can't carry investment
3. JawaliWeCash's wallet, licensed by the Central Bank of Yemen
4. ONE CashMoves up to 3,000,000 rial between users commission-free

In 2025 the Houthi administration in Sanaa issued a 200-rial note inscribed 'Central Bank of Yemen', and the internationally recognised government warned Yemenis against accepting it as counterfeit currency from an illegal entity — so a banknote's validity now depends on which authority you are standing under. The rial reached about 2,150 to the dollar in January 2025. Against that, hawala moves household remittances efficiently while lacking the accountability to carry anything larger, and licensed wallets like Jawali and ONE Cash operate on top of a currency question nobody has settled.

Sources 158, 159, 160

PYG

The wallet with the most accounts isn't the one moving the most money — and both needed a new legal category invented before they could exist.

1. Tigo MoneyTop~60% of wallet operations, of 9.5M in March 2024 alone
2. Billetera PersonalMore accounts than Tigo — 2.50M against 2.29M
3. SIPThe central bank's rail, renamed from SIPAP in 2026
4. CashStill the default in the informal economy

Paraguay created the EMPE licence so that Tigo Money, Personal Pay and Ueno could legally hold guaraní accounts, which is how two telcos ended up running the country's retail payments. Tigo was then the first wallet admitted to the central bank's SIPAP module, through Bancop, and that admission is what made wallets interoperable around the clock. Personal has more accounts open; Tigo does about 60% of the transactions — a reminder that registrations and usage are different metrics. The BCP renamed SIPAP to SIP in 2026: new name, logo and colour, nothing else.

Sources 161, 162

XAF — The Central African CFA franc, pegged to the euro and shared with five neighbours.

Two operator wallets and almost no bank branches — the payment system is the mobile network, because nothing else reaches.

1. Airtel MoneyTopOne of Airtel's francophone markets, inside a 44.6M-user footprint
2. Moov MoneyThe competing operator wallet
3. CashStill how nearly all rural trade settles

Chad sits inside Airtel Africa's francophone segment alongside the DRC, Gabon, Niger and Congo-Brazzaville, where mobile money revenue grew 29.7% year on year to $466M against a customer base of 38.9M. In a country this large and this thinly banked, an agent with a phone is the branch.

Sources 163, 136

XAF — The Central African CFA franc, pegged to the euro.

Mobile money here isn't competing with a bank account — for most people it is the first and only one.

1. Orange MoneyTopThe leading wallet in one of the world's least-banked countries
2. CashThe default almost everywhere outside Bangui
3. Airtel MoneyThe challenger network

Orange Money holds the strongest position across Cameroon, the DRC and the CAR. In a country where formal financial access is among the lowest anywhere and the state's reach outside the capital is limited, the operator's agent network is the financial system rather than an alternative to it.

Sources 164, 231, 136

XAF — The Central African CFA franc — a different currency from West Africa's, at the same euro peg.

Not to be confused with its enormous neighbour: same currency zone, same two wallets, a fiftieth of the population.

1. Airtel MoneyTopAirtel calls itself the largest network here; its wallet leads with it
2. MTN MoMoThe other continental giant, also at scale here
3. CashStill dominant in day-to-day retail

Congo-Brazzaville is one of the seven markets in Airtel Africa's francophone segment, and one of the handful where Airtel Money and MTN MoMo both operate at full scale. Inbound remittances were opened up in 2025 through a pawaPay tie-up covering Gabon and Congo among others — the piece that had been missing was not the wallet but the route into it from abroad.

Sources 163, 164

XAF — The Central African CFA franc, pegged to the euro.

Oil money bought a card layer that most of the region never got, and the wallets grew anyway.

1. Airtel MoneyTopOne of Airtel's francophone markets; remittances opened up in 2025
2. MTN MoMoPresent at scale alongside Airtel
3. Cardspaying businessesA real if urban layer — Gabon is upper-middle-income
4. CashStill the everyday default

Gabon is unusual in Central Africa for being upper-middle-income, which gave it a genuine card and branch presence in Libreville. The wallets still took the rest: Airtel Money and MTN MoMo both operate at scale, and in 2025 a pawaPay integration opened inbound remittances directly into them.

Sources 163, 164

NAD · ZAR — The dollar is pegged one-to-one to the rand, and the rand is legal tender here too.

A country of three million rebuilt its entire interbank EFT on ISO 20022 — the plumbing upgrade most of the region is still waiting for.

1. NamPayTopThe national EFT rebuilt on ISO 20022, with a near-real-time stream
2. PayTodayThe domestic wallet with real consumer traction
3. FNB eWalletSend to a phone number, cash out with no account
4. CashStill substantial outside Windhoek

NamPay replaced the old Namclear EFT with three new streams — enhanced debit orders, enhanced credits and near-real-time credits — on the ISO 20022 messaging standard. It is an unusually thorough piece of infrastructure work for a small market, and it is what the wallets sit on: PayToday, Mobipay, FNB's eWallet and EasyWallet all clear through it.

Sources 165, 166

BWP

Three operator wallets over a rail that moved from overnight batches to real-time settlement — the difference between getting paid tomorrow and getting paid now.

1. Orange MoneyTopThe largest of three operator wallets
2. Mascom MyZakaThe domestic operator's rival
3. BTC SmegaThe state operator's wallet
4. CashRetreating as real-time settlement replaces batch EFT

Botswana's wallets — Orange Money, Mascom MyZaka and BTC Smega — grew because the alternative was batch EFT that settled overnight. Instant payments changed the proposition: real-time settlement means the money is there when the transfer completes, which is what makes a wallet usable for wages and trade rather than only for transfers home.

Sources 167, 136

SSP · USD — Dollars circulate widely alongside a pound that has lost most of its value.

One of the only countries to declare mobile money legal tender — and it did so to solve a cash shortage, not to modernise.

1. m-GurushTopThe pioneer wallet — 'M' for mobile, 'gurush' for money
2. MTN MoMoNamed in the central bank's 2025 mandate alongside m-Gurush
3. DigiCashDigitel's wallet, the third licensed platform
4. CashWhat the mandate is trying to move salaries off

On 18 July 2025 the central bank accepted mobile money as legal tender and mandated digital salary payments for civil servants, naming MTN MoMo, Zain's m-Gurush and Digitel's DigiCash. That is a rare legal step, taken because physically paying a public payroll had become the binding constraint. m-Gurush came first and needs no bank account, which most South Sudanese do not have; it has since opened cross-border transfers with Kenya and Uganda.

Sources 168, 169, 170

RON — Outside the euro; property and larger contracts are still often priced in euros.

A late but complete instant rail: RoPay arrived in 2024 with a phone number standing in for an IBAN, ten years after the region's first movers.

1. CardsToppaying businessesContactless is the urban default
2. RoPayPhone number as an IBAN proxy, settled in under ten seconds
3. CashStill heavy outside the cities
4. RevolutUnusually deep penetration for a challenger bank

TRANSFOND and the Romanian Banking Association launched RoPay on 18 November 2024 — QR, deep links, NFC and a phone number as a proxy for an IBAN, settling in under ten seconds. It started at CEC Bank and Libra, with BRD, ING, BCR and Banca Transilvania joining through 2025, which is the point at which a scheme like this becomes usable rather than merely available.

Sources 171, 172

HUF

Hungary built its instant rail first and only later gave merchants a way to accept it — qvik is that missing half, and it is growing fast.

1. CardsToppaying businessesStill the till default while qvik scales
2. qvik31,000+ merchant locations by Q2 2025, transactions up 41% in a quarter
3. CashFalling, but Hungary was a late convert

Hungary's instant payment system has cleared transfers around the clock since 2020, but it had no merchant-facing product; qvik, launched in September 2024, is the layer that lets a shop take it by QR, NFC or app link. By Q2 2025 it was live at over 31,000 locations with volumes up 41% in a single quarter — the growth curve of something that was missing rather than something new.

Sources 173, 174

EUR

Proportionally one of Europe's most successful domestic wallets: Flik reaches roughly two in five Slovenes.

1. FlikTop800,000+ users and ~2M transactions a month, in a country of 2.1M
2. Bank transfer (SEPA)Over 80% of Slovenian SEPA transactions already settle instantly
3. Cardspaying businessesStandard at the till
4. CashA minority, and shrinking

Flik is the Slovenian banks' shared real-time transfer scheme, and in a country of 2.1 million it has over 800,000 users doing around two million transactions a month. More than 80% of Slovenia's SEPA transactions already settle instantly — well ahead of the EU mandate, which is why the domestic wallet had something solid to sit on.

Sources 175

EUR — Adopted the euro in January 2023, replacing the kuna.

A tourism economy that had to take every card in the world, and grew two domestic wallets underneath it anyway.

1. CardsToppaying businessesThe tourist economy made acceptance near-universal
2. KEKS PayThe domestic wallet, now accepted as far as Croatia Airlines
3. AircashThe other Croatian wallet with real reach
4. Bank transfer (SEPA)Instant became mandatory to receive in January 2025, to send in October

Croatia joined the euro in 2023, and its visitor economy had already forced near-universal card acceptance. KEKS Pay and Aircash grew in that gap between cards and bank transfers, and the EU instant-payments regulation then set the floor: receiving instant payments became obligatory in January 2025 and sending them in October.

Sources 176

RSD · EUR — Savings and property are widely denominated in euros despite the dinar being the only legal tender.

A central-bank QR standard built to give a cash economy something to switch to, rather than to replace cards.

1. CashTopStill the default across much of the economy
2. IPSThe central bank's instant scheme, paid by QR from a banking app
3. Cardspaying businessesStandard in organised retail

The National Bank of Serbia's IPS moves money instantly and is paid by scanning a QR code inside a bank's own app — the same design choice Bolivia and Nepal made, and for the same reason: in an economy where cash still dominates, the competition is a banknote rather than a card.

Sources 177

CZK — Outside the euro by choice, with no target date to join.

The QR code here isn't a wallet — it's a pre-filled bank transfer, standardised by the banks so every app reads the same square.

1. CardsToppaying businessesThree-quarters of Czechs say they prefer contactless
2. QR platbaA banking-association standard: scan, and your own bank app fills the transfer
3. CashA shrinking minority

QR platba is a Czech Banking Association standard rather than a product: the code carries the account, amount and reference, and whichever banking app you scan it with fills in the payment. It solved bill and invoice payment years before wallets arrived, which is part of why no Czech Swish ever needed to exist.

Sources 178, 179

EUR

Germany's payment culture in miniature: bank transfer for anything online, card at the till, and a stubborn attachment to cash.

1. CardsToppaying businessesDebit at the till, with cash still unusually resilient
2. EPSThe banks' online transfer scheme, the Austrian way to pay online
3. BluecodeDomestic phone payment, shared with Germany
4. CashAustrians hold onto notes harder than most of Western Europe

EPS is the Austrian banks' equivalent of iDEAL — a redirect to your own bank to authorise a transfer — and it carries online checkout the way cards do elsewhere. Bluecode added phone payment across Austria and Germany. Cash use stays high for cultural rather than infrastructural reasons; the rails to leave it have been there for years.

Sources 180, 75

KGS

A digital bank rather than a telco won this market, and its rivals interoperate — you can top one wallet up from inside another.

1. MBankTopThe country's first digital bank, and its default app
2. ElsomKICB's wallet; you can top up a rival from inside it
3. O!DengiThe operator wallet, receiving transfers from Elsom
4. CashStill the default in the bazaars

MBank arrived as Kyrgyzstan's first digital bank and became the app people default to for utilities, transfers and cards. What is unusual is the cooperation underneath: Elsom, KICB's wallet, can top up O!Dengi accounts directly, so the wallets behave less like walled gardens than in most comparable markets.

Sources 181, 182

OMR — Pegged to the dollar, and one of the world's highest-value currency units.

The Gulf card pattern, with one domestic wallet that got there by being the first fintech the central bank was willing to license.

1. CardsToppaying businessesContactless debit is the Gulf default
2. ThawaniThe first fintech licensed as a PSP by the Central Bank of Oman
3. CashA shrinking share, mostly informal trade

Oman's retail payments look like its neighbours' — cards and contactless — but Thawani is the local exception: the first Omani platform built to international banking standards and the first fintech granted a payment-service-provider licence by the Central Bank of Oman, which is what let a non-bank hold the rail at all. Fuel retail was an early anchor, which is how a wallet gets a habit.

Sources 183, 184, 109

LAK · THB · USD — The kip lost much of its value after 2021; baht and dollars circulate widely alongside it.

One state bank's app is the payment system, in a country where the local currency is only one of three you might be handed.

1. BCEL OneTopThe state commercial bank's app, and the country's default
2. LapNETThe interbank ATM network behind it
3. CashThree currencies of it, often in the same drawer

BCEL is Laos' largest commercial bank, and BCEL One is what people mean by digital payment here — QR at merchants, transfers, bills — with LapNET as the interbank network underneath. The currency picture complicates everything: after the kip's slide from 2021, Thai baht and US dollars circulate alongside it, so a wallet has to handle a country that hasn't settled what it prices things in.

Sources 185, 186

TND — Non-convertible: you cannot legally take dinars out of the country.

The post office runs both of the country's wallets — the same pattern as Algeria next door, and for the same reason: it reaches where banks don't.

1. CashTopStill the default, which is what TUNPAY exists to change
2. D17La Poste's wallet — transfers, plus electricity, water and telecoms bills
3. e-DinarLa Poste's other wallet, for merchants and administrative fees
4. Cardspaying businessesA minority rail, concentrated in formal retail

Tunisia's digital payments are a La Poste story. D17 and the e-Dinar Wallet both belong to the postal operator and both sit under the unified TUNPAY mark, covering transfers, utility bills and administrative fees. The dinar is non-convertible, which keeps the whole system domestic by design and gives the post office — present in every town — a structural advantage over the banks.

Sources 187, 188

PGK

A country of 800 languages and almost no roads, where a bank account is something you open on a phone because a branch will never arrive.

1. CashTopTerrain and language fragmentation defeat branch networks
2. CellMoniDigicel's wallet — deposits, withdrawals, transfers, bills
3. MiCashMiBank's account, opened and run over a Digicel number
4. Cardspaying businessesPort Moresby and Lae, essentially

Papua New Guinea is the hardest geography on this map for a branch network: mountainous, riverine, and more linguistically fragmented than anywhere else on earth. So the wallets came through the mobile operator — CellMoni on Digicel numbers, and MiBank's MiCash as an actual bank account operated over the same network. Adoption is still developing rather than won; earlier attempts here are a standard case study in the limits of the mobile money model.

Sources 189, 190, 191

TMT — Pegged at an official rate far from the street rate, and tightly controlled.

Nearly everyone has the state's card because that's how salaries arrive; almost nobody can spend it, because the terminals aren't there.

1. CashTopOverwhelmingly the primary method for all transactions
2. Altyn Asyrpaying businessesThe central bank's card — for receiving salaries more than spending them
3. TMCELL TölegThe state operator's payment app

The Central Bank of Turkmenistan founded Altyn Asyr in 2001 and it is genuinely widespread — but as a disbursement channel, not a payment one. Cash remains overwhelmingly primary because acceptance terminals are scarce, so the card's job is to convert into banknotes at an ATM. Progress is measured in specific concessions: Ashgabat's public transport began accepting Altyn Asyr contactless, which in this market counts as news.

Sources 192, 193, 194

TJS · RUB — Remittances from Russia are a large share of GDP, so roubles matter to household income.

A bank that behaves like a technology company took the market: one app for 3,500 billers, a marketplace and buy-now-pay-later.

1. alif MobiTopThe most widely used wallet — 3,500+ billers, plus QR in shops
2. CashStill the default in the regions
3. Cardspaying businessesGrowing since Alif began issuing Visa domestically

Alif Bank built alif Mobi into Tajikistan's most used wallet by making it the single place to pay for anything — utilities, top-ups, internet, and QR at the till — then extended into instalments and an online marketplace. A Visa partnership brought card issuance in behind it. The context that shapes everything here is remittances: a large share of household income arrives from Russia, so the rails that matter are the ones that receive.

Sources 195, 196

SYP · USD · TRY — Three currencies circulate, and the wallet that pays public salaries handles all of them.

A wallet that went from launch to compulsory in months: since May 2025 it is the only way the state pays anyone.

1. Sham CashTopThe sole platform for public-sector salaries since May 2025
2. CashStill the only option for anyone without a smartphone
3. HawalaHow money has crossed the border for fifteen years

Sham Cash rose after the fall of the former regime in early 2025 and the Ministry of Finance made it the single channel for public-sector salaries from that May, handling Syrian pounds, dollars and Turkish lira. Making a payroll app mandatory in a country with patchy electricity, patchy connectivity and no established digital-payment habit drew immediate objections on privacy and access grounds — no phone, no salary — and the platform only began seeking a formal licence from the central bank after months of questions about its legal standing.

Sources 197, 198, 199

BGN — Pegged to the euro through a currency board, and on track to adopt it.

One of Europe's fastest handovers from cash: 93% of counter payments were notes in 2014, and cards lead now.

1. CardsToppaying businessesNow ahead of cash at the till, which is recent
2. Cash93% of point-of-sale transactions as recently as 2014
3. RevolutHeavily used, as across the eastern EU
4. Bank transfer (SEPA)Instant transfers for anything that isn't retail