Global Payments Report 2025: The Future Is (Anything but) Stable (Boston Consulting Group)

Summary

• Global payments revenue reached $1.9 trillion in 2024 after growing at an 8.8% compound annual growth rate since 2019.p.4
• Growth is expected to slow to 4.0% annually over the next five years, taking revenue to $2.4 trillion by 2029.p.4
• Real-time account-to-account payments make up around a quarter of global retail digital payments, up 40% year-on-year in 2024.p.4
• Payments-focused fintechs have attracted $135 billion in equity funding over the past 25 years and generated $176 billion in revenue in 2024.p.4
• Stablecoins reached a market capitalization of around $210 billion by the end of 2024, growth of 57% year-on-year.p.10
• Tokenized real-world assets have grown to roughly $28 billion in market capitalization, a nearly fourfold increase in two years.p.10

Key insights

1. Value-added services could represent 30% to 35% of US acquiring revenue by 2027.p.4
2. Eastern Europe transaction-related revenue is growing by roughly 13%, far outpacing Western Europe's 4.3% and North America's 5.6%.p.5
3. Non-transaction-related revenue growth in Europe is expected to slow to just 1.6% through 2029.p.5
4. Payments players integrating SaaS generated average annual total shareholder returns of 37% over the past three years, while acquirers and processors generated just 2%.p.7
5. Klarna expects $40 million in incremental profit from its AI assistant this year.p.8
6. Stablecoin volume in Turkey reached $38 billion in the 12 months through March 31, 2024.p.11
7. USDC transaction volume in Nigeria jumped 412% year-on-year in 2025.p.11