Coverage means both directions.

Bangladesh
BDT (৳), Bangladeshi taka

Paying online means a mobile wallet, overwhelmingly bKash, then Nagad, then Rocket, funded by cash-in at a neighbourhood agent or by bank transfer. Cards are a minority urban instrument and cash on delivery is still how a large share of e-commerce orders are actually settled nationally, much less so in Dhaka than outside it.

bKashWallet

NagadWallet

RocketWallet

UpayWallet

mCashWallet

tapWallet

Bangla QRQR

NPSBBank rail

VisaCard

MastercardCard

American ExpressCard

Cards: Partly, and never as the primary plan. Cards are a minority instrument and credit cards especially so, concentrated in higher-income urban segments. Domestically issued Visa and Mastercard debit cards do work online through licensed local gateways. Cross-border is the hard part: the taka is not freely convertible under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act 1947, a resident paying a foreign merchant needs foreign currency endorsed against a passport travel quota and banks collect an authorisation form for foreign payments, so a foreign-billed USD checkout should expect a high proportion of Bangladeshi card attempts to simply fail.

Regulator: Bangladesh Bank, through its Payment Systems Department, under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act 2024. No entity may operate a payment system or provide payment services without a Bangladesh Bank licence; the categories that matter commercially are MFS, PSP and PSO. Offences under the Act are cognizable and non-bailable.

India
INR (₹), Indian rupee

Almost every consumer payment defaults to UPI: open PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm or a bank app, scan a QR or tap a link, enter a UPI PIN, and money moves account to account instantly. Cards are a real but secondary online method concentrated in credit, travel and large tickets, and cash on delivery survives, increasingly settled by scanning the courier's UPI QR at the door.

UPIBank rail

UPI QRQR

UPI AutoPayBank rail

RuPayCard

VisaCard

MastercardCard

American ExpressCard

Bharat ConnectBank rail

Cards: Yes, with real friction, and not where the volume is. Every card-not-present transaction on an India-issued card needs an additional factor of authentication, in practice OTP or 3-D Secure, so there is no one-click card flow; card-on-file tokenisation has been mandatory since 2022, so raw PANs cannot be stored and merchants work with network tokens. Foreign-issued cards work at an Indian merchant only where the acquirer has international acceptance explicitly enabled, usually restricted to a registered Indian entity, and real-world decline rates are noticeably higher. India-issued cards often have international use switched off by default. Recurring card billing is heavily constrained by the RBI e-mandate framework, which is why most Indian merchants moved subscriptions to UPI AutoPay or e-NACH.

Regulator: Reserve Bank of India, under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007. UPI, RuPay, IMPS, NACH and Bharat Connect are built and operated by the National Payments Corporation of India, a not-for-profit company owned by a consortium of banks: NPCI is the operator, not the regulator and not a government department. Aggregation is governed by the consolidated RBI (Regulation of Payment Aggregators) Directions, 2025.

Pakistan
PKR (Rs)

A cash-first market being pushed hard toward account-to-account payment by the central bank. Consumers pay from a mobile wallet, overwhelmingly JazzCash or Easypaisa, or from a bank app, both riding Raast; in e-commerce, cash on delivery is still the largest way physical goods are paid for and card checkout is minority behaviour.

RaastBank rail

Raast P2M and Raast QRQR

JazzCashWallet

EasypaisaWallet

NayaPayWallet

SadaPayWallet

IBFT (1LINK)Bank rail

PayPakCard

VisaCard

MastercardCard

Cards: Technically yes, strategically weak. Debit is roughly 90% of the cards in issue and credit only about 4 to 5% (approximate SBP-derived figures, need re-dating), many debit cards are ATM-first and not e-commerce-enabled by default, and OTP friction plus distrust of online payment pushes shoppers back to cash on delivery. Outbound, SBP caps card-based international spending per person per year, and two of the largest global processors do not serve Pakistani residents at all, which is why freelancer inflows run through other channels. Card acceptance is a necessary tick-box for cross-border and affluent urban buyers; the domestic volume is in Raast, wallets and cash on delivery.

Regulator: State Bank of Pakistan, which authorises PSO/PSP and Electronic Money Institution licences under the Payment Systems and Electronic Fund Transfers Act 2007 and owns and operates the national instant rail Raast through its wholly-owned subsidiary Raast Payments Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd. Crypto and virtual assets are not SBP's remit: they sit with the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority under the Virtual Assets Act 2026, a separate licensing regime with criminal penalties for unlicensed operation.

Nepal
NPR (Rs / रू), Nepalese rupee

QR-first and bank-app-first: most consumers pay by opening their own bank's mobile app or a wallet and scanning a merchant-presented QR sticker. Wallets dominate utility bills, top-ups and ticketing, larger account-to-account payments run through connectIPS, and cash on delivery is still real in physical-goods e-commerce.

Fonepay QRQR

NEPALPAY QRQR

eSewaWallet

KhaltiWallet

connectIPSBank rail

VisaCard

MastercardCard

UnionPayCard

SCTCard

Cards: Poorly, in both directions. Some Nepali acquirers do support foreign Visa, Mastercard and UnionPay e-commerce acceptance, but online card acceptance is not the norm for domestic checkouts and card-not-present acceptance is thin outside travel, hotels and airlines. Outbound, NRB restricts foreign-currency card spend hard: a Nepali consumer needs a specifically issued foreign-currency or prepaid card and is capped at low annual limits for personal foreign online purchases, and those caps have moved several times, so any figure must be re-verified against the current NRB circular before publication. Domestic-only cards will not work on a foreign-billed checkout at all. If you want to be paid by consumers in Nepal you accept QR, wallets and connectIPS, not cards.

Regulator: Nepal Rastra Bank, through its Payment Systems Department, under the Payment and Settlement Act, 2019. NRB licenses Payment System Operators (the networks and switches) and Payment Service Providers (the wallets), publishes the NepalQR standard, and owns and operates the RTGS itself.

China (mainland, excluding Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan)
CNY (¥, renminbi). RMB and CNY are used interchangeably in trade; CNH is the offshore-traded version.

A two-app duopoly: essentially every adult with a smartphone pays by scanning or presenting a QR code in Alipay or Weixin Pay, funded from a linked mainland bank card rather than a stored balance, and the same two apps are the checkout inside almost every website and mini-program. Cards are the plumbing underneath rather than the consumer interface, and a card-only checkout page reads as broken.

AlipayWallet

Weixin Pay / WeChat PayWallet

UnionPayCard

Cloud QuickPassWallet

American ExpressCard

Visa and MastercardCard

e-CNYWallet

Cards: Not realistically for collecting from consumers inside China. The average consumer holds a UnionPay card and has no Visa or Mastercard to give you; those are issued on the mainland mainly as a travel product for a small affluent minority. UnionPay itself does work cross-border and a foreign merchant can accept it online through an acquirer that supports it, but expect meaningful friction: OTP and UnionPay authentication, uneven online issuer support, and declines on foreign-currency transactions. Anything moving outbound is also gated by the cardholder's annual USD 50,000 foreign-exchange facilitation quota, which resets each 1 January and is a real ceiling on high-ticket purchases. Build for wallets and treat cards as the fallback, not the reverse.

Regulator: People's Bank of China, which licenses non-bank payment institutions under the Regulations on the Supervision and Administration of Non-bank Payment Institutions, in force 1 May 2024, and controls bank card clearing licences. The State Administration of Foreign Exchange governs the cross-border FX leg and registers the institutions permitted to do it. Clearing is deliberately state-channelled: NetsUnion Clearing Corporation has been the mandatory switch for all non-bank online payments involving bank accounts since 2018, and UnionPay clears cards. China Customs is a de facto payments gatekeeper for imported goods sold cross-border.

Indonesia
IDR (Rp)

The one market in this set with no dominant wallet: four genuinely compete, and QRIS, Bank Indonesia's mandatory national QR standard, sits underneath every wallet and bank app so a single QR accepts all of them. For online checkout the long-standing default is a bank transfer to a per-order virtual account number, and convenience-store cash is still a real channel.

QRISQR

GoPayWallet

DANAWallet

OVOWallet

ShopeePayWallet

LinkAjaWallet

GPNCard

Visa, Mastercard and JCBCard

Cards: Weakly. Credit card penetration is low, a large share of domestic debit cards are GPN-routed and not enabled for online purchases, and international cards reach only a minority, higher-income slice of shoppers. Treating cards as the primary method here loses most of the addressable market.

Regulator: Bank Indonesia, which licenses payment service providers (PJP) and sets the QRIS standard with the industry association ASPI. OJK supervises financial institutions more broadly.

Philippines
PHP (₱)

A two-wallet market sitting on a national QR standard: GCash is dominant, Maya is second, and both, along with the bank apps, interoperate through QR Ph. Bank-to-bank movement runs on InstaPay for instant low-value transfers and PESONet in batch, while cash on delivery and over-the-counter cash payment remain significant in e-commerce.

QR PhQR

GCashWallet

MayaWallet

BancNetBank rail

Visa and MastercardCard

Cards: For a minority. Credit card penetration is low and concentrated in higher-income urban segments, and debit cards are widely held but unevenly enabled for online use. International Visa and Mastercard do work at Philippine merchants through licensed acquirers, but a card-led checkout will underconvert badly against GCash, Maya and QR Ph.

Regulator: Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. The automated clearing houses, InstaPay and PESONet, operate under the industry body Philippine Payments Management Inc within the BSP's National Retail Payment System framework.

Vietnam
VND (₫)

Bank transfer by QR is the default: VietQR codes are carried in essentially every bank app and settle over NAPAS, and they have become the everyday way people pay merchants and each other. MoMo is the largest consumer wallet alongside that, and cash on delivery is still heavily used for physical goods.

VietQRQR

NAPAS 247Bank rail

MoMoWallet

ZaloPayWallet

VNPAY-QRQR

Viettel MoneyWallet

NAPAS domestic cardsCard

Visa, Mastercard and JCBCard

Cards: For a minority. Domestic NAPAS cards are the widely held instrument and they are domestic acceptance only apart from a small co-badged subset; international Visa, Mastercard and JCB reach a smaller, higher-income segment. A card-led checkout will underconvert against VietQR and wallets.

Regulator: State Bank of Vietnam. Intermediary payment services require an SBV licence with VND 50 billion charter capital and a local office or compliance representative. NAPAS operates the national switch: the SBV holds 49% of its charter capital, the largest single holding, with the remainder held by around fifteen major commercial banks, so it is state-anchored with bank co-ownership rather than state-majority-owned.

Malaysia
MYR (RM)

A QR and online-banking market: DuitNow QR is the national QR standard carried in bank apps and wallets, and Touch 'n Go eWallet is the largest consumer wallet. Online banking payment at checkout is migrating from FPX to its designated replacement, DuitNow Online Banking and Wallets.

DuitNow QRQR

DuitNow Online Banking and Wallets (DOBW)Bank rail

FPXBank rail

DuitNow transferBank rail

Touch 'n Go eWalletWallet

GrabPayWallet

BoostWallet

ShopeePayWallet

MyDebitCard

Visa and MastercardCard

Cards: Better than most markets in this set, but still secondary online. Visa and Mastercard credit and debit are widely issued and accepted at Malaysian merchants. MyDebit, the domestic debit scheme carried on most Malaysian debit cards, is domestic acceptance only. QR and online banking still carry the bulk of e-commerce checkout volume.

Regulator: Bank Negara Malaysia, under the Financial Services Act 2013. The national retail rails are operated by Payments Network Malaysia (PayNet), in which the central bank is a shareholder alongside the banks.

Thailand
THB (฿)

PromptPay is the default: consumers pay from their bank app, either transferring to a proxy such as a mobile number or national ID, or scanning the Thai QR standard, and merchant QR acceptance reaches down to very small merchants. TrueMoney is the main wallet alongside it, and cash on delivery is still common in physical-goods e-commerce.

PromptPayBank rail

Thai QR PaymentQR

TrueMoney WalletWallet

ShopeePayWallet

Visa, Mastercard and JCBCard

Cards: Yes, more usefully than in most of this set, but still secondary online. Visa, Mastercard and JCB are widely issued and accepted at Thai merchants and the credit card base is comparatively developed. PromptPay and QR still carry the everyday volume, and a checkout without QR will underconvert.

Regulator: Bank of Thailand, under the Payment Systems Act B.E. 2560 (2017). PromptPay and the interbank retail rails are operated by National ITMX.

United States
USD ($), United States dollar

A card market at the checkout and an ACH market behind it: cards carry consumer e-commerce, ACH carries payroll, rent, invoices and anything recurring. Instant account-to-account arrived late and is fragmented, with Zelle inside bank apps taking most consumer volume while FedNow and RTP compete underneath. PayPal, Venmo and Cash App hold the balances people actually spend from online.

Visa and MastercardCard

American ExpressCard

DiscoverCard

ZelleBank rail

FedNowBank rail

PayPalWallet

VenmoWallet

Cash AppWallet

Apple Pay and Google PayWallet

Cards: Yes, better than almost anywhere. Credit penetration is high, contactless and stored-credential checkout are normal, and card acceptance alone gets you most of the addressable market. The costs are the other side of that: interchange is among the highest in the developed world outside the Durbin-capped debit ceiling, and chargeback rights under Regulation Z and the network rules are broad and used, so a US card programme is priced on dispute exposure rather than on acceptance rate.

Regulator: No single regulator. The Federal Reserve operates Fedwire and FedNow and supervises member banks; Nacha, a private association, writes the ACH rules while the Fed and EPN operate the network; The Clearing House, bank-owned, operates RTP. Money transmission is licensed state by state, roughly fifty separate licences plus territories, on top of federal FinCEN registration as a money services business. OFAC sanctions screening applies to every payment, and the CFPB enforces Regulation E error-resolution timelines on consumer electronic transfers.

Singapore
SGD (S$), Singapore dollar

Highly banked, high card penetration, and an instant rail that people actually use. PayNow addresses a payment to a mobile number, NRIC or business UEN over the FAST rail and settles in seconds; SGQR puts every QR scheme behind one merchant sticker; GIRO handles recurring debits; NETS carries domestic debit at the point of sale. Cash is marginal.

SGQRQR

NETSCard

GrabPayWallet

Visa and MastercardCard

American ExpressCard

Apple Pay and Google PayWallet

Cards: Yes, thoroughly. Visa, Mastercard and American Express are all well accepted online and offline, cross-border acceptance is routine, and contactless is the norm. Singapore is one of the few markets in this list where a card-only checkout is a viable starting point rather than a gap.

Regulator: The Monetary Authority of Singapore, under the Payment Services Act 2019, which replaced the earlier money-changing and remittance regimes with a single activity-based licence in three tiers: money-changing, standard payment institution and major payment institution. The Act also licenses digital payment token services, which is the part that matters to anything settling in USDT, and MAS applies the FATF travel rule to those transfers.

Canada
CAD (C$), Canadian dollar

Card-heavy at the till and Interac e-Transfer for everything else. Interac Debit dominates in-person debit, credit cards dominate online, and e-Transfer has become the default way Canadians send money to a person or pay an invoice, initiated from inside a bank's own app. Batch EFT carries payroll and pre-authorised debits.

Interac e-TransferBank rail

Interac DebitCard

Visa and MastercardCard

American ExpressCard

PayPalWallet

Apple Pay and Google PayWallet

Cards: Yes. Credit card penetration and rewards usage are high, contactless is universal, and online card acceptance is unremarkable. Interac Debit is the domestic scheme in physical retail; its online presence exists but is narrower than the credit networks', so an e-commerce checkout that takes only credit cards still reaches most buyers.

Regulator: Payments Canada operates the clearing and settlement infrastructure, Lynx for high-value and the ACSS for retail batch, under the Canadian Payments Act, with Bank of Canada oversight. Payment service providers must register with the Bank of Canada under the Retail Payment Activities Act, a regime that only recently came into force. FINTRAC handles anti-money-laundering supervision and money services business registration, and Interac, a domestic network owned by its participants, operates both the debit scheme and e-Transfer.

Australia
AUD (A$), Australian dollar

A card market with one of the highest contactless rates in the world, sitting on a modern instant rail. PayID addresses an NPP payment to a phone number, email or ABN, Osko is the overlay that moves it in seconds, and PayTo is replacing the old direct debit mandate model. BPAY handles bills, and the legacy BECS batch rail is being wound down.

eftposCard

Visa and MastercardCard

American ExpressCard

Apple Pay and Google PayWallet

Cards: Yes, exceptionally well. Contactless is the default in physical retail to the point where cash handling is unusual, card-on-file e-commerce is mature, and eftpos provides a cheaper domestic debit route that least-cost routing pushes volume toward. Surcharging is permitted but capped at the merchant's actual cost of acceptance under RBA rules, and the RBA has been consulting on tightening or removing that permission, so surcharge assumptions should be checked rather than inherited.

Regulator: The Reserve Bank of Australia's Payments System Board oversees the payments system and sets interchange and surcharging standards. Australian Payments Plus, formed by the 2022 merger of eftpos, BPAY and NPP Australia, now operates the domestic debit scheme, the bill rail and the instant rail as one organisation. AUSTRAC handles anti-money-laundering supervision and registers digital currency exchange providers, which is the registration that matters to anything touching USDT, and APRA prudentially regulates the deposit-taking institutions behind it all.

Italy
EUR (€), euro

A card market with a strong domestic accent. Most Italians carry a PagoBANCOMAT debit card co-badged with an international scheme, and prepaid cards, above all Poste Italiane's Postepay, carry an outsized share of online checkout. PayPal is the default online wallet, Satispay is the growing local one, MyBank carries bank-transfer checkout, and account-to-account payment runs on SEPA in euro, with instant transfers now a standard bank feature under EU law.

Visa and MastercardCard

American ExpressCard

PagoBANCOMATCard

PostepayCard

BANCOMAT PayWallet

SatispayWallet

PayPalWallet

Apple Pay and Google PayWallet

MyBankBank rail

SEPA credit transferBank rail

SEPA instant credit transferBank rail

Cards: Yes, with a domestic twist. Visa and Mastercard acceptance is universal online, the euro is freely convertible and there are no FX controls, so cross-border checkout has none of the friction of the Asian markets on this page. What Italians actually hold is the twist: credit cards are a minority instrument, debit and prepaid dominate, and much of domestic debit is PagoBANCOMAT, a point-of-sale scheme, so online that cardholder is reached through the co-badged international scheme on the same card or through BANCOMAT Pay rather than the PagoBANCOMAT rail itself. Strong customer authentication under PSD2 makes 3-D Secure effectively mandatory on every online card payment, and a checkout that handles SCA badly loses real volume.

Regulator: The Bank of Italy, which authorises and supervises payment institutions and electronic money institutions under PSD2 as transposed by Legislative Decree 11/2010, operating inside the Eurosystem with the European Central Bank. The SEPA credit transfer and instant credit transfer schemes are maintained by the European Payments Council, and the EU Instant Payments Regulation obliges euro-area banks to offer instant transfers priced no higher than ordinary ones. Crypto-asset service providers are authorised under the EU's MiCA regulation, with supervision split between the Bank of Italy and Consob, which is the regime that matters to anything settling in USDT.