As the pandemic shut down day-to-day life around the world, more than 40 million new users came online for the first time across Southeast Asia’s six largest economies in 2020. Sectors including e-commerce, cross-border payments, and insurtech boomed as a result.
The trend appears to be continuing in 2021. The Mastercard New Payments Index, a new report released on May 4th, notes that 94% of respondents plan to utilize at least one new digital payment method this year.
“Mastercard’s study finds that people in the Asia Pacific region haven’t just adopted new payment technologies – they’ve made deliberate shifts based partly on necessity, but also on considerations around personal safety, security, and convenience, at a time when these concerns were paramount,” Sandeep Malhotra, Mastercard’s Executive Vice President for Products & Innovation, said in a statement accompanying the report’s release.
