Cullen International just published its latest Global Trends research on digital payments and currencies covering 12 major economies: Australia, Brazil, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Singapore, South Africa, the UK and the US.

Out of 12 surveyed economies, in 2021 payments made by non-cash means surpassed 50% of total retail payments by value in 11 economies, and 75% in six of the economies covered by the research. The use of crypto assets for payments remains very limited however.

Interestingly, 11 out of 12 economies already implemented policies to promote adoption of digital payments in fiat currencies such as the US dollar, including to promote competition via regulatory sandboxes, open banking schemes or interoperability requirements.

From a consumer standpoint, a variety of consumer protection initiatives were implemented to prevent fraud involving digital payments or currencies in the surveyed economies. For example, the European Union introduced mandatory strong customer authetication and the UK a bank account name checking service (confirmation of payee).

Specific rules or guidelines on liabilities in cases of fraud were implemented in the European Union, India, Japan and the UK to mitigate consumer harm.

Regarding crypto assets, only two of the 12 economies have taken specific initiatives to promote adoption of crypto assets.

The research also covers:

• whether regulation of cryptocurrencies was already implemented or is currently under debate in each surveyed economy, e.g. the proposed Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) Regulation in the European Union; and
• the status of plans and trials to launch central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), e.g. China tested the e-CNY during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

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