In the past decade, digital wallets, also known as mobile wallets, have been one of the biggest developments in the world of both retail and fintech.
Shoppers can use them to place an order online, with the digital wallet remembering all their payment and delivery information to speed up the transaction.
At cross border retailers this technology is especially helpful, as it allows people to buy products from all over the world, no matter their usual currency.
Digital wallets can also turn mobile phones into contactless payment devices, meaning that shoppers can leave their cash and card at home.
As well as the convenience factor, digital wallets also offer security for both businesses and their customers.
The way data is encrypted means that shoppers’ payment details are kept safe and the process also helps protect businesses from fraud and theft, while lowering the transaction costs the business has to pay.
At the start of the decade, the mobile payments transaction volume – excluding China – was $4.44 billion – but by 2023, the volume was almost twice that, at $7.39 billion.
One prediction from Juniper Research suggests that in 2025, the market size of mobile wallet transactions will reach $5704.66 billion in the Far East and China; $1,071.64 billion in North America; $708.49 billion in Europe; $372.41 billion in Latin America; and $1,562.43 billion in the rest of the world.
It’s clear to see that digital wallet use is growing – but now, let’s get into more detail about their use.
Mobile wallets for in-person shopping
Mobile wallets are hugely popular for in person shopping around the world. 2024 data from Statista showed the number of people who had used this technology to pay in a shop, restaurant or any other location in the past 6 months, across different countries.
The country where most people had done so was Kenya, at 80%. China was next, with 72% making an in person payment on their phone with a digital wallet. In third place, 65% of people in Thailand had also done so.
At the other end of the spectrum, the country where the fewest people had used a mobile wallet for in person shopping was Morocco, where only 11% of people had done so in the past year.
14% of people in the Dominican Republic had used this technology recently, and 15% of people in France.
The most popular digital wallets around the world
New research compared some of the most popular digital wallets to see how many countries they are being used in. According to the research, these were the 10 most popular digital wallets with the widest presence across the most countries.
The most popular digital wallet by this metric was Apple Pay, which is available in 45 countries, followed by PayPal which can be used in 41 countries. In third place was AliPay, in 39 countries.
| Country | Totals per app |
|---|---|
| Apple Pay | 45 |
| Paypal | 41 |
| Alipay | 39 |
| Alipay + | 38 |
| Google Pay | 37 |
| Wechat Pay | 25 |
| Amazon Pay | 16 |
| Samsung Pay | 13 |
| Grab Pay | 3 |
| Mobile Pay | 2 |
When it comes to which countries have the highest number of digital wallets available, the USA, Hong Kong and Malaysia each have nine digital wallets that shoppers can use.
The next highest number of digital wallets in action is eight – France, Italy, Portugal and Spain all have this number of providers.
Moving onto countries with seven types of digital wallets available, there are 14 countries in this list, including Australia, Canada and the UK.
While China only has three of the main digital wallets available, this actually serves to show how popular Alipay is here, meaning that most people use this option.
WeChat Pay is another population option. In fact, between them, Alipay and WeChat have 90% of the mobile payments market in China.
In contrast, several countries have just one of the biggest digital wallet providers available for shoppers: Bahrain, Gibraltar, Mexico and Vietnam.
However, these countries also have their own local digital wallets only available to users based in that country, such as Vietnam’s ViettelPay, which were not included in this research due to their smaller user base.
| Number of major digital wallets available | Countries |
|---|---|
| 9 | Hong Kong, Malaysia, USA |
| 8 | France, Italy, Portugal, Spain |
| 7 | Australia, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, UK |
| 6 | Austria, Malta, New Zealand, Slovakia, Slovenia |
| 5 | Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Romania |
| 4 | Brazil, Indonesia, Lichtenstein |
| 3 | China, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Philippines, South Korea, UAE |
| 2 | Kuwait, Thailand, Ukraine |
| 1 | Bahrain, Gibraltar, Mexico, Vietnam |
Top ten in payments processor usage
While not digital wallets themselves, payment processors are vital for facilitating payments that use this technology – and the most popular payment processors might be those that are easiest for businesses and customers alike to use, as well as ones that enable businesses to accept a wider variety of payment methods.
Stripe, the most popular payment processor according to research from Built With, is used by 35.67% of the websites in the data set. It accepts over 100 payment methods.
The second most popular payment processor is Google Pay, used by 33.81% of websites – what’s different about this technology is that it is also a digital wallet, meaning that the payment process is very smooth and integrated.
The third most popular payment processor was Klarna, used by half as many websites at 15.3%. Klarna’s USP might be its ‘buy now pay later feature’.
| Technology | Websites | % |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe | 1,597,288 | 35.67 |
| Google Pay | 1,514,22 | 33.81 |
| Klarna | 685,221 | 15.3 |
| PayPal Form | 267,763 | 5.98 |
| Amazon Payments | 174,501 | 3.9 |
| Braintree | 164,474 | 3.67 |
| Wirecard | 20,909 | 0.47 |
| CCBill | 12,215 | 0.27 |
| Checkout.com | 11,819 | 0.26 |
| MasterPass | 9,580 | 0.21 |
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