Phi Commerce envisages five key payment trends to emerge in 2025

MUMBAI, India, Dec. 26, 2024 -- In the past few years, digital payments have transformed the way Indians conduct financial transactions, driven by the explosive growth of Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Indian policymakers have facilitated a payments ecosystem in the country like never before, that consumers have begun to come to terms with a new ease of transacting, which has also thrown up challenges of its own.

2024 saw significant changes in the payments landscape, with frameworks drawn for features like conversational voice payments, credit lines, UPI vouchers and UPI Circle. These enhancements aim to improve user convenience and broaden the adoption of digital payments. UPI has also become a global role model in payments, with several countries in Asia, Africa and South America engaging the National Payments Corporation of India to develop digital payment systems modelled after UPI, with launches anticipated by early 2027. 2024 also saw the Reserve Bank of India conducting a digital currency pilot, with major payment firms like Google Pay, PhonePe, and Amazon Pay seeking to participate, indicating a move towards integrating central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) into the payment ecosystem.

As a provider of digital payments like UPI to enterprise clients, Phi Commerce envisages five key payment trends to emerge in 2025, after consistent deliberations with its ecosystem partners. These touch upon the emerging growth of AI-enabled fraud prevention tools, growing popularity of cross border payments, unified lending interface, interoperable mobile wallets and biometric payments.

AI-enabled Digital Fraud Detection

According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), domestic payment fraud increased by 70.64% in six months, reaching Rs 2,604 crore by March 2024, up from Rs 1,526 crore during the same period the previous year. The number of fraud cases also spiked, increasing to 15.51 lakh from 11.5 lakh in the prior six months.

As a result of the dynamic nature of threats in line with technology advancements in payments, traditional fraud detection systems that use rule-based frameworks to identify suspicious transactions are no longer effective. In the current context, prevention must be prioritised over detection and artificial intelligence (AI) could help address these issues a lot more efficiently. AI-enabled tools aim to offer proactive and predictive fraud detection tools against incidents like deepfake videos and sophisticated phishing scams. Financial institutions are turning to AI-powered fraud detection systems to analyse vast datasets in real time, identifying and neutralizing threats effectively. Security has become the foremost challenge for the payments industry as fintech innovations are on the rise, which is adding to the volumes of transactions.

Real-Time Cross-Border Payments

The domestic payment ecosystem is witnessing a global transformation, driven by the international interoperability of UPI. In FY2024, cross-border UPI transactions surged by 150%, according to NPCI data, reflecting robust adoption and rising consumer confidence. Looking ahead, the integration of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and stablecoins into real-time cross-border payment frameworks is set to revolutionise global financial transactions. These advancements promise to significantly reduce transaction costs, enhance processing speeds, and provide seamless payment experiences, thereby catalysing international trade and economic growth.

Unified Lending Interface

The Unified Lending Interface (ULI) framework introduced by the Reserve Bank of India will emerge as a transformational tool to address the last mile gap in India's lending landscape, much like the way UPI transformed the retail payments landscape. ULI will simplify access to credit by integrating various stakeholders in the lending ecosystem, such as banks, NBFCs, digital lending platforms, and regulators, through a common platform using the plug-and-play model. And this will essentially help the under-banked communities more (read farmers, MSMEs etc), as lending institutions will now have access to borrowers' digitised records lying with state or central databases, account aggregators, credit bureaus, financial institutions and so on.

Digital Wallet and Interoperability

India's widespread adoption of digital wallets is paving the way for their seamless integration with card-based payment systems, eliminating silos and offering consumers unparalleled convenience. As per a GlobalData report, the value of mobile wallet transactions in India expanded at a compound growth rate of 72.1% to reach US$2.5 trillion, from 2019 to 2023. Digital wallets now make up for 25% of total payments in India, while UPI dominates 80% of retail transactions (RBI Payments Data 2024). Interoperable digital wallets that support multiple payment networks and protocols, enabling users to transact across various merchants and service providers, is the way forward, and 2025 will see more action on that front.

Face-based Payments

The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) move to allow non-OTP methods, such as biometric authentication for the second payment factor, opens the door to face-based payment systems. Facial recognition can offer a seamless and secure alternative to traditional OTP-based methods, eliminating the dependence on mobile networks or SMS delivery.

In the Indian context, this innovation could significantly enhance the user experience, especially in regions with inconsistent mobile connectivity. It also addresses challenges like SIM-swapping fraud or delays in receiving OTPs. Facial recognition leverages advanced AI and biometric data, ensuring both convenience and security, critical in high-volume and low-value transactions like those in retail or transit systems.

This shift aligns with India's growing digital payment ecosystem, where Aadhaar-enabled authentication has already laid a robust foundation for biometric verification. For merchants, it reduces friction at checkout points, and for consumers, it means faster transactions without additional devices.

About Phi Commerce

Digital payments company Phi Commerce offers omnichannel payment solutions to enterprises that enable them smooth and flexible payments across all consumer touchpoints — browser, mobile, in-store and remote. A payment aggregator payment gateway (PAPG) licence holder from the Reserve Bank of India, Phi Commerce offers a unified omnichannel digital payment platform catering to both B2B and B2C payment requirements for businesses worldwide. The company, backed by investors like Beenext Singapore and Opus Ventures, has offices in Mumbai, Pune, and Singapore, with plans afoot to expand into Southeast Asia, Japan and the Middle East. Phi Commerce had won the 'Best in Class Payment Startup in Established Fintech Category' at the 2024 Assocham Annual Fintech Excellence Awards.

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