Thailand’s Digital Payments Boom Sets Pace for ASEAN — But New Risks Loom Large

Summary

Thailand has emerged as ASEAN’s clear frontrunner in the shift to cashless payments, with its PromptPay platform driving explosive growth in everyday transactions and financial inclusion. A fresh IMF assessment shows the country is also pioneering cross-border linkages that are boosting tourism and SME trade. Yet the same speed that powers this success is creating new vulnerabilities — from patchy bilateral connections to a worrying spike in online scams and mule accounts — raising questions about whether the region can keep up without stronger shared safeguards.

Recount of Events

The International Monetary Fund’s latest review of ASEAN’s digital payment landscape, released in February 2026, puts Thailand firmly at the forefront. Between 2019 and 2024, non-cash payment volumes grew by an average of more than 75 per cent each year, almost entirely thanks to PromptPay.

Introduced in 2016, the system allows instant transfers simply by linking a bank account to a national ID or mobile number. Usage has skyrocketed: the average Thai now makes nearly 350 fast-payment transactions a year — eight times more than in 2019. Daily volume has passed 74 million, while registrations have topped 90 million in a country of just 71 million people. E-money accounts now reach almost half the adult population, well ahead of the ASEAN average of around 20 per cent.

The results are visible across the economy. Financial account ownership has climbed to 80 per cent of adults, debit-card penetration sits at 55 per cent, and half of Thais have made at least one digital payment. Even SMEs have moved quickly — 96 per cent now accept digital payments, which make up more than two-thirds of their transaction value.

Cross-border progress has been equally striking. Thailand began linking QR payments with Japan in 2018 and has since added eight more partners. Its 2021 fund-transfer connection with Singapore was a regional first. Inbound QR payments hit THB 2.5 billion in 2024 — five times higher than the year before — helped by the fact that intra-ASEAN tourists now make up 42 per cent of all visitors.

Recognising the limits of these one-on-one links, Thailand is co-leading Project Nexus alongside Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and India under the BIS Innovation Hub. The multilateral hub-and-spoke model aims to replace fragmented connections with a single, standardised system; Singapore is expected to go live by 2027.

At the same time, the rapid rollout has fuelled a sharp rise in financial crime. Over 10,000 suspicious accounts have been frozen in recent months, while authorities recorded more than 1.18 million online scam cases between late 2023 and mid-2025. In the first week of March 2026 alone, police logged nearly 7,700 new complaints, with losses reaching THB 434 million.

Analysis

From our perspective in Indonesia, Thailand’s achievement is both impressive and instructive. We have seen similar momentum with QRIS at home, but Thailand has scaled faster and deeper, turning a simple payment rail into a genuine growth driver for small businesses and the tourism sector that supports millions of jobs across ASEAN.

The bigger picture, though, is that bilateral linkages — while quick to launch — are already showing their limits. They work for a handful of countries but become inefficient and expensive as more players join. Project Nexus offers a cleaner alternative: one shared infrastructure that could slash costs, speed up remittances and reduce our collective reliance on the US dollar for everyday regional trade. For Indonesian exporters, Vietnamese manufacturers or Singapore-based logistics firms, that kind of seamless connectivity would be a game-changer.

The darker side cannot be ignored. The explosion of mule accounts and sophisticated online scams is not just a Thai problem — it is an ASEAN wake-up call. Every ringgit, rupiah or baht stolen through these networks is money taken out of supply chains, household spending and SME working capital. Thailand’s decisive action this year shows what strong enforcement looks like, but the rest of the region needs to move in step — sharing intelligence, aligning regulations and building joint defences — before the trust that underpins digital adoption starts to erode.

Thailand has shown what is possible when a country moves decisively on digital payments. The rest of ASEAN now faces a clear choice: follow the same path with coordinated infrastructure and robust safeguards, or risk watching a powerful tool for inclusion and growth lose momentum to fragmentation and fraud. The opportunity is too important to leave to chance.