More than half of everything spent online now moves through a digital wallet, not a card number typed into a checkout box. According to Worldpay’s Global Payments Report 2026, a survey of 63,000+ consumers across 42 markets published in March 2026, 56% of global e-commerce transaction value moved through digital wallets in 2025. That is more than direct card payments, more than cash, and more than every other payment method combined.
The shift is not limited to online shopping. Cash is losing ground in physical stores too, real-time payment rails are moving hundreds of billions of transactions a year, and the country leading that shift is not the United States, the United Kingdom, or China. The numbers below break down how far the shift has gone, where cash still holds on, and what it means for how a store handles refunds when the original payment was never a card in the first place.
How much of global e-commerce moves through digital wallets in 2025?
Digital wallets, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, WeChat Pay, and similar services, captured 56% of global e-commerce transaction value in 2025, according to Worldpay’s Global Payments Report 2026. Cards paid directly at checkout, without routing through a wallet, made up 31% of online value, with the remaining 13% split across bank transfers, buy now pay later, and other methods.
Figure 1: How global e-commerce spending splits by payment method. Source: Worldpay, Global Payments Report 2026, 63,000+ consumers surveyed across 42 markets.
PayPal alone accounts for 439 million active accounts worldwide, making it one of the largest single wallets behind the 56% figure. Apple Pay, Google Pay, and regional wallets such as WeChat Pay and Alipay make up most of the rest, with the exact mix varying sharply by country, from Argentina and China, where 80% or more of phone payments run through a QR-based payment app, to markets where card-linked wallets still dominate.
Digital wallets are no longer a niche checkout option. For most of the world’s e-commerce spending, the wallet is now the default.
Is cash disappearing from stores worldwide?
Cash is shrinking in physical stores too, just more slowly than online. Cash accounted for 14% of global point-of-sale value in 2025, according to Worldpay, and is forecast to fall further to 12% by 2030. Direct card payments still lead in-store at 48% of value, with digital wallets and payment apps at 33%.
Figure 2: Cash still holds on in some markets far more than the global average. Source: Worldpay, Global Payments Report 2026.
The decline is not even. Japan and several European markets still run 30% or more of point-of-sale value in cash, while India shows how fast the picture can change: cash’s share of India’s point-of-sale spending collapsed from 71% in 2019 to just 14% in 2025, a shift driven almost entirely by the rise of UPI-linked payment apps. Payment apps overall are forecast to reach 46% of global in-store transaction value by 2030, growing 135% faster than in-store spending as a whole.
A global average of 14% hides enormous country-level variation, and a store’s own customer base matters more than the worldwide figure when deciding which payment methods to support.
How many people worldwide actually use digital payments?
Adoption has grown fastest where it started from the lowest base. 61% of adults in low- and middle-income economies made or received a digital payment in 2024, up from 34% in 2014, a 27-percentage-point increase, according to the World Bank’s Global Findex Database 2025, a survey of roughly 148,000 adults across 141 economies conducted over 2024.
Narrower measures show the same trend. 42% of all adults made a digital merchant payment in 2024, up from 35% in 2021, and among adults who already have a formal financial account, 82% made or received a digital payment. Regional mobile money growth tells a similar story: in Sub-Saharan Africa, 40% of adults held a mobile money account in 2024, up from 27% in 2021; in Latin America and the Caribbean, the figure rose from 22% to 37% over the same period.
For a closer look at how one specific wallet fits into that global adoption curve, see how many people use PayPal worldwide, which breaks out user counts by region.
The gap between having a financial account and actually using it for digital payments has been closing for a decade, and 2024’s survey shows that gap closing faster than it has at any point since Global Findex started tracking it.
How many non-cash transactions happen globally, and how fast is that growing?
Volume, not just value share, tells the same story from a different angle. Global non-cash transactions surpassed 1.6 trillion in 2024 and are projected to exceed 3.5 trillion by 2029, according to Capgemini’s World Payments Report 2026, based on a survey of 2,600 merchants and more than 420 payments executives across 15 countries. Capgemini describes non-cash transaction volume as having grown more than tenfold in under 20 years, a pace that has consistently outrun global GDP growth.
Figure 3: Ten years of the shift from cash to digital, in five data points. Sources: Worldpay, Capgemini.
Buy now pay later is part of what is pushing that volume up. Global BNPL e-commerce value has grown from $2.3 billion in 2015 to $342 billion at the most recent count Worldpay has published, still a small share of total e-commerce value but one of the fastest-growing lines on the chart.
The trend line points in one direction. Every forecast in this dataset, from Capgemini’s transaction volume projection to Worldpay’s own cash forecast, expects the shift away from cash to keep accelerating rather than level off.
Which country leads the world in real-time digital payments?
Real-time rails, where a payment settles in seconds instead of days, are growing faster than any other category in this dataset. 266.2 billion real-time payment transactions happened globally in 2023, up 42.2% year over year and representing 19.1% of all electronic transactions, according to ACI Worldwide’s Prime Time for Real-Time report, the most recent edition of which covers 51 markets and 2023 transaction data. ACI projects that figure will reach roughly 575.1 billion real-time transactions by 2028.
Figure 4: How a payment ends up counted as “real-time” versus standard settlement. Source: synthesized from ACI Worldwide’s Prime Time for Real-Time report definitions.
One country dominates that volume. India’s UPI system processed 129.3 billion transactions in 2023, nearly half of every real-time payment made anywhere in the world that year.
Figure 5: India’s UPI accounts for close to half of all real-time payment volume worldwide. Source: ACI Worldwide, Prime Time for Real-Time report, 2023 data.
Brazil’s Pix has grown into the second-largest real-time system over roughly three years, though it remains far behind UPI’s scale. Payment processors that route transactions for merchants, including large platforms in this space, sit behind most of this volume without appearing in the country-level totals themselves; a full breakdown of individual processor market share is outside the scope of this dataset.
How does payment method choice affect refunds and chargebacks?
The payment method a shopper used to pay is not just a checkout detail, it determines how a refund actually gets processed. A card payment routes through the card network and can trigger a chargeback if the merchant does not respond; a digital wallet or account-to-account payment often refunds directly through the wallet provider, on a different timeline and under different dispute rules. With direct card payments still holding 31% of online value and digital wallets holding 56%, most stores are now handling two materially different refund paths side by side, not one.
| Payment method | Online (e-commerce) share, 2025 | In-store (POS) share, 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Digital wallets | 56% | 33% |
| Cards (direct) | 31% | 48% |
| Cash | not applicable online | 14% |
| Other (BNPL, bank transfer, etc.) | 13% | 5% |
Source: Worldpay, Global Payments Report 2026.
A refund policy written only around card chargebacks is already out of date for more than half of a typical store’s transaction value. A Refund Policy Generator that states the refund method, window, and process separately for wallet payments and direct card payments avoids leaving the majority payment method undocumented.
The Bottom Line
56% is the number that defines where global commerce stands in 2026: more than half of every dollar spent online now moves through a digital wallet, not a typed-in card number. Cash has not disappeared, it still holds 14% of point-of-sale value worldwide and considerably more in specific markets like Japan and Spain, but the direction of travel is consistent across every source in this dataset, from Worldpay’s transaction-value data to Capgemini’s transaction-volume forecasts to the World Bank’s adoption survey. A store’s refund policy, checkout flow, and dispute-handling process all need to reflect a majority-wallet reality now, not the mostly-card world these documents were often written for a decade ago.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much of global e-commerce runs through digital wallets? 56% of global e-commerce transaction value moved through digital wallets in 2025, more than cards, cash, or any other payment method, according to Worldpay’s Global Payments Report 2026, a survey of 63,000+ consumers across 42 markets published in March 2026.
Is cash disappearing from stores worldwide? Cash fell to just 14% of global point-of-sale value in 2025 and is forecast to decline further to 12% by 2030, per Worldpay’s Global Payments Report 2026. India’s cash share alone collapsed from 71% in 2019 to 14% in 2025.
How many people worldwide actually use digital payments? 61% of adults in low- and middle-income economies made or received a digital payment in 2024, up 27 percentage points since 2014, according to the World Bank’s Global Findex Database 2025, a survey of about 148,000 adults across 141 economies.
Which country leads the world in real-time digital payments? India, by a wide margin. Its UPI system processed 129.3 billion transactions in 2023, nearly 49% of all real-time payment transactions worldwide, according to ACI Worldwide’s Prime Time for Real-Time report.
Sources and References
- Worldpay. (2026). “Global Payments Report 2026.” 11th edition, survey of 63,000+ consumers across 42 markets, published March 2026.
- Worldpay. (2025). “Global Payments Report 2025.” 10th edition, 2014-2024 comparison data.
- World Bank. (2025). “The Global Findex Database 2025.” Survey of approximately 148,000 adults across 141 economies, conducted 2024.
- Capgemini Research Institute. (2026). “World Payments Report 2026.” 21st edition, survey of 2,600 merchants and 420+ payments executives across 15 countries.
- ACI Worldwide. (2024). “Prime Time for Real-Time.” Analysis of 51 real-time payment markets, 2023 transaction data, the most recent published edition of this report as of this writing.
Note: All figures verified as of September 2026. Payment method mix shifts with new report editions each year, so headline figures here are refreshed at least twice a year, and the ACI real-time payments figures will be updated once a newer edition of that report is published.
