APAC has mastered domestic payments. The next challenge is connecting them.

Success will come from making cross-border payments feel as familiar and predictable as domestic ones.

For years, payments innovation across Asia has focused on making domestic transactions faster, cheaper, and easier.

From UPI in India and PayNow in Singapore to PromptPay in Thailand and DuitNow in Malaysia, the region has seen some of the world's most advanced instant payment systems built. These systems are now setting the standard globally, with other markets, including the US, increasingly looking to APAC as a blueprint for modernising their own payment infrastructure.

Ironically, the region’s success has now exposed its next challenge.

Consumers are now used to being able to pay instantly at home. Whether it's sending money to a friend, paying a taxi fare or shopping online, payments are quick, simple, and increasingly invisible. As commerce becomes ever more globalised, those same expectations now extend to cross-border transactions. If someone can make a payment in seconds domestically, they don't expect buying from an overseas merchant or paying a supplier in another market to feel completely different — but that's exactly what often happens.

The Asia-Pacific region (APAC) has spent the last decade building world-class domestic payment ecosystems, so the issue isn’t that the region lacks strong payment infrastructure. The problem is that those systems have largely evolved independently, shaped by different regulations, banking models, and consumer behaviours. They're highly effective within their own markets, but far less connected once a payment crosses a border.

You can see that play out across Southeast Asia today. A merchant selling into several neighbouring markets may need to support multiple local payment methods, navigate different settlement processes, and manage varying compliance requirements, despite operating within the same region. Customers, meanwhile, can still encounter unexpected foreign exchange costs, unfamiliar payment options, or delays that simply don't exist when they're paying domestically.

The conversation has focused on faster settlement for years, but speed on its own doesn't solve fragmentation. If payment systems can't communicate effectively with one another, faster rails simply move complexity further down the chain. The real opportunity lies in making those domestic ecosystems work together more seamlessly.

We are now starting to see that shift taking place. Initiatives such as ASEAN's Regional Payment Connectivity programme, QR payment linkages between markets including Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia, and the Bank for International Settlements' Project Nexus all point in the same direction. Rather than replacing domestic payment schemes, they're focused on connecting them, allowing customers, and businesses to move between markets without the payment experience changing dramatically.

APAC does not need a single regional payment system. Part of the reason why domestic schemes are successful is because they reflect local banking systems, regulations, and consumer behaviours. The goal should therefore be interoperability, not uniformity: Preserving what works locally whilst creating the connections that allow payments to travel more easily across borders.

Having said that, bilateral QR links and individual payment corridors should be seen as a starting point rather than the finished product. Merchants could still face the friction of dealing with multiple integrations and settlement arrangements if connectivity develops through a patchwork of separate agreements. These initiatives will need to evolve into infrastructure that works consistently, at commercial scale, across the region. Without that scale, regional connectivity risks becoming another layer of fragmentation rather than the solution to it.

The next phase of payments innovation will be measured by how well domestic payment systems connect. The countries that have invested heavily in domestic payments don't need to start again. They need to make the infrastructure they've already built work beyond their own borders. The markets that do this most effectively will be best placed to attract digital businesses, support regional commerce, and help smaller merchants reach customers in neighbouring economies.

For banks, that changes the conversation. Success won't simply come from moving money faster. It will come from making cross-border payments feel as familiar and predictable as domestic ones. That means greater transparency around fees, better access to local payment methods, and stronger interoperability between payment systems, so complexity stays behind the scenes rather than becoming the customer's problem.

Payment providers also need to absorb more of that complexity. Merchants should not need to understand the technical and regulatory differences between every market in which they operate. They should have a consistent way to accept payments, receive funds, and manage reconciliation across countries.

APAC has already shown what's possible when banks, regulators, and payment providers align around a common goal. The next step is to take that same approach beyond national borders. The region led the first phase of instant payments. Its next competitive advantage will come from connecting what it has already built.