Payments used to be an afterthought once you’d built your product. Now they are the product or at least a defining part of the customer experience. From checkout flow to fraud prevention and global expansion, the way money moves through your business shapes how quickly you grow, whom you reach, and the confidence level in your brand. Below is a guide to current payment trends and how businesses are adapting.

What’s in this article?

• What are the latest payment trends?
  
• Why is payment flexibility becoming a competitive differentiator?
  
• How are businesses rethinking their payment flows?
  
• How are businesses managing multiple payment models?
  

What are the latest payment trends?

The global payment environment is shifting – and fast. The mechanics of how people pay, how businesses get paid, and how money moves across systems are all being redefined. Below are the most consequential changes that are shaping payments in 2025.

Digital wallets and contactless payments are now the default

Contactless payments have gone from just a feature to the baseline in many regions. More than two-thirds of in-person purchases on the Mastercard network, for example, are now contactless.

Digital wallets are also becoming more popular than physical wallets. By 2022, digital wallet payments outnumbered physical card payments in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, and usage is expected to continue increasing in every region through 2030.

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is part of everyday spending

Paying by instalments is now part of daily life, with BNPL no longer confined to discretionary purchases. The BNPL market is projected to grow from $231.51 billion in 2024 to $343.52 billion in 2025 and expand into sectors such as groceries, auto repair, and even medical services.

BNPL also influences shopping behaviour along with checkout. Many shoppers start their purchase trajectories on BNPL marketplaces by searching for deals they can finance through instalments.

Real-time payments are expected

Customers increasingly expect money to move as fast as a text message, whether they’re receiving a refund, tipping a service provider, or getting paid for freelance work. For platforms and marketplaces in competitive markets, offering instant payouts is important for user satisfaction.

Real-time payments are now available in more than 70 countries. These networks enable 24/7 instant transfers, with no need to wait for batch settlement. By 2028, about 27% of global electronic payments are expected to be real-time payments.

AI is elevating fraud detection

Generative AI has created new fraud threats, but it’s also becoming an effective defence. Large-scale models can scan huge datasets in milliseconds and identify suspicious patterns far faster than humans or traditional rules-based systems can.

AI-driven systems at major financial institutions achieve average detection rates of 91%, compared to 65%–70% for rule-based systems. Biometric authentication – such as fingerprint, face ID, and passkey logins – now manages much of the security burden behind the scenes, which minimises interruptions to the user experience.

Regulation and collaboration are reshaping the market

The shift towards more connected systems is blurring the line between legacy institutions and newer firms. As a result, payments are becoming more modular, more regulated, and more interdependent.

Scrutiny of non-bank payment providers is also increasing. In the US and abroad, regulators are updating rules to better govern fintechs and payment intermediaries.

At the same time, industry collaboration is accelerating. Banks, platforms, and tech companies are working together for interoperability on digital identity, embedded wallets, and shared infrastructure.

Crypto’s influence is more about infrastructure than currency

Cryptocurrency payments remain niche, but their influence on infrastructure is growing. Stablecoins and blockchain rails are being tested for cross-border transactions and payment reconciliation. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilots and Web3 integrations are progressing but haven’t achieved mainstream utility.

Why is payment flexibility becoming a competitive differentiator?

In 2025, how you allow customers to pay is often just as important as what you’re selling. Payment flexibility – accommodating different methods, terms, and models – is a lever for revenue, reach, and retention. Here’s a closer look at some of the reasons why.

Payment preferences directly affect conversion

For businesses that use Stripe, showing one additional payment method beyond cards increases conversion by about 7% on average. In some markets, the impact is even bigger. Stripe’s research found that adding Alipay for customers in China leads to a 91% increase in conversion. In the Netherlands, supporting iDEAL increases it by 39%. Overall, the average digital wallet user spends 31% more than customers who use other payment methods.

The right options attract new customer segments

BNPL users can start their shopping on BNPL marketplaces rather than search engines or retailer sites. With 30% of US adults using at least one BNPL service, these providers can help businesses attract new customers.

Preferences vary widely across countries. Supporting local methods (e.g. BLIK in Poland, Pix in Brazil) is often important for gaining traction.

Flexibility helps improve retention

Making it easier for customers to update their payment methods, switch between billing plans, or pause a subscription can keep them engaged for longer.

In B2B and software-as-a-service (SaaS) models, offering options such as net terms and usage-based billing can meet a wider range of buyer needs.

Customers often feel safer with what’s familiar. If your checkout flow doesn’t follow a well-established logic, they might hesitate – or leave entirely.

How are businesses rethinking their payment flows?

Many companies understand that clunky payments decrease conversion. What’s changing in 2025 is how systematically businesses are moving to eliminate those obstacles. They’re pulling apart every step of the payment process – online and offline – to simplify and speed up payments and quietly remove barriers before customers even notice them. Below are some of the practical ways this trend is playing out.

Online checkouts are being rebuilt and redesigned

Many businesses are resolving the issues that slow down checkout, including unnecessary fields, multiple pages, and account creation requirements. Guest checkout, real-time form validation, and smart autofill are now default options. Returning customers’ information is remembered, with card details stored securely through tokenisation. Repeat purchases can take just seconds. These time-saving measures can have an outsize impact on revenue, especially at scale.

Express payment buttons are doing more heavy lifting

Digital wallets such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay are fast and convenient for customers, while typing in a card number takes extra time. If customers can pay with a single click, there will be fewer barriers to completing checkout.

Mobile-first design is now the baseline

With most ecommerce traffic now coming from phones, businesses are fine-tuning interactions for small screens. That means larger buttons, fewer form fields, faster load times, and more integrations with native device features such as card scanning and face ID. Software development kits (SDKs) for mobile payment are getting smarter and enabling deep links, prefilled invoices, and scan-to-pay functionality straight from messaging apps or emails.

Smarter risk systems are replacing blanket security

Traditional fraud checks often create friction. In 2025, many businesses are using tools such as Stripe Radar for real-time risk scoring, which enables even faster processing on low-risk transactions. Only the few that actually raise warning signs get blocked.

The goal is to catch fraud without penalising legitimate customers. When it’s done effectively, this can mean higher approval rates and a better customer experience.

In-person checkout is done on mobile devices

Contactless technology is now almost everywhere. It turns any smartphone into a terminal, which eliminates bulky hardware. Instead of funnelling people to a register, restaurants and retailers are using handheld devices or QR codes that let customers pay with their phones rather than wait in long lines.

Some businesses are removing the checkout step altogether. Think of ride-sharing or delivery apps, where payment is automatic. Not every industry uses this model, but it’s spreading. The more embedded and automatic the payment experience is, the less likely customers are to drop off.

How are businesses managing multiple payment models?

As payments infrastructure becomes more flexible for customers, it’s getting more complex for businesses. Many companies now manage multiple payment models: they might have to support subscriptions, one-time purchases, marketplaces, and usage-based billing all at once.

For example, a SaaS platform might sell subscriptions, upsell add-ons, and run a marketplace. A retailer could have direct-to-consumer ecommerce, pop-up stores with in-person payments, and a paid membership programme. Each of these flows has different risk considerations, compliance requirements, billing cadences, and tax accounting. These details compound fast, especially across multiple geographies or currencies. Here’s how businesses are managing this additional complexity.

Unified payments platforms

To avoid creating a web of point solutions and manual processes, businesses can centralise their payments. Unified payments platforms now natively support multiple models with a single integration. This reduces overhead: there are fewer vendors and data silos to manage, and there’s one place to reconcile revenue across channels and countries. Stripe, for example, handles subscriptions, on-demand payments, payouts, and global checkout flows all in the same system. It also manages more complicated tasks such as proration, invoicing, and tax collection.

Multiple payments service providers

Large-scale companies often work with multiple payments service providers to refine costs or performance. This is where payment orchestration is beneficial. Orchestration provides more control and redundancy and adds another layer to maintain. These layers route transactions dynamically by geography, payment type, or fallback logic. If a transaction fails with one provider, it can be retried automatically with another. Some orchestration tools also split payments across methods (e.g. partially from a digital wallet, partially on a card).

Even more automation

Many previously manual processes – including reconciliation, retries, invoicing, and compliance checks – are now being automated, too. Subscription platforms are automating dunning flows, revenue recognition, and proration. Payment systems are syncing with accounting and enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools to record transactions and flag mismatches. Smart retry logic is being used to recover failed payments based on payroll cycles or past customer behaviour.

Payment architecture improvement

The teams that manage payments today often act as performance analysts. They’re improving payment architecture with the same rigour they’d apply to infrastructure or conversion funnels. Businesses that build systems to be flexible with new models, markets, and use cases are better positioned to expand without breaking down. Payment architecture has become an important capability, and the companies that build it well monitor:

• Authorization and decline rates by method, country, and provider

• The amount of churn driven by failed payments or billing issues

• Latency in payout flows to sellers or contractors

• Cost trade-offs between providers, currencies, and guardrails