Growth In Asia’s Digital Payments Due to Covid-19

Digital payments are now the fastest gaining currency in the world including Asia, as customers are trying to dump cash to prevent physical contact with fears over coronavirus trapping. As regulators impose prohibitions on movements to help reduce COVID-19, businesses have increased their digital transformation that also involves digital payments.

The epidemic has fast-tracked the switch to digital payments around the Asia-Pacific (APAC) as per Global Data, data analysis and consulting firm. COVID 19 would undoubtedly increase the current digital payment pattern, especially in Asia. At the end of October 2019, Chinese President Xi Jinping supported Blockchain, a digital ledger system that can exchange digital currencies. The Chinese government vigorously supports the online banking system, although Western nations increasingly employ a top-down approach to governance.

Customers are embracing Electronic Payments

Customers from Asia are showing a great interest in paying electronically like never before. The cumulative payment in the APAC sector is projected to rise by 6.5%, hitting US$ 20.3 trillion in 2020, according to updated GlobalData predictions. This could continue to grow to 27.4 trillion dollars by 2023. These patterns are being observed in several countries such as India, the Philippines, Japan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Malaysia.

These authorities can necessarily take drastic preventive measures. It is also clear that a major means of communication for highly contagious conditions like COVID-19 could be a physical currency. In Guangzhou, a local bank of the People’s Bank of China has planned to destroy paper money in high-risk facilities such as wet-market and hospitals.

Governments are taking extra precautions

China, South Korea, and several Asian Countries have quarantined or cleaned the banknotes. It is well known that circulating money can serve as a medium for pathogen transmission, although the potency of pathogens transmitted through cash remains unknown. For example, the human influenza virus will stay alive and infectious on banknotes for more than two weeks. Although it is not clear if the trade of influenza-infected currencies will significantly accelerate its distribution, U.S, Korean, and Chinese government responses pose questions.

These activities reflect government approaches to contagious diseases. A late 1940s study on the cholera outbreak in Egypt emphasized the survival of cholera infections on banknotes. All across experience, people have replied to sickness similarly by cleaning or disinfecting banknotes, but we also have little comprehension about how modern diseases might be spread through actual currencies.

Future of Asia’s digital landscape 

From such a larger perspective, COVID-19 is just one of a sequence of advancements that will influence the digital world of Asia’s future. The emphasis has thus been unsurprisingly on short-term effects if it is how online technologies might have helped prevent the progression in main countries, whether COVID-19 will increase the implementation of many industries such as digital payments, or personal contracts that frequently occur in crucial economies such as India and China.

But although the longer-term effect may be as yet uncertain, the real question is how COVID-19 could readjust broader trends in Asia’s digital landscape at different levels.

Contribution of Asian Countries in the growth of Digital Payments 

What these Asian governments think and do, in the new world, will remain relevant to observe. Financially, how the regulatory framework works out on main Asian markets would be advanced analytics of this, whether in broad, including the interaction between the Japanese government and businesses or more particular trends on e-commerce like Indonesia and GR-80.

But in terms of the political and protection realms, policymakers would still have to resolve increasing global threats inside and outside their borders, like cyberattacks by state and non-state entities and digital technologies used to drive disinformation campaigns.

Contribution at Regional Level

The local scale would also be critical in determining how COVID-19 would affect Asia-Pacific’s emerging environment. In places such as smart cities, certain attention will be on existing digital collaboration trends, whether it is region-wide firm action or multilateral coordination thru the Alliance of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

But it will also be crucial to know some completely new occurrences of cooperation and at the multilateral level. One good example is the latest Digital Economy Collaboration Agreement (DEPA) signed earlier this year among New Zealand, Singapore, and Chile.

Role of International Organizations

Lastly, COVID-19 has also reiterated the international realm’s significance that also affects the Asia-Pacific digital domain. Macro-level developments like U.S.-China rivalry or the international market condition will grow to wield tremendous impact through 2020 and even beyond. But still, a crucial issue would be how other participants respond to the international level.

Organizations, including the world trade organization, can control how laws are formed in international commerce areas, while businesses can also help creative fuel strategies in fields such as online learning and digital payments where common divisions exist in the field. With the overall implications of COVID-19 already working out, it needs to be seen how precisely this would affect the nature of Asia’s public sphere.

And as we concentrate on the macro- and micro-level consequences of the coronavirus, we can also raise wider questions about the digital environment, such as the need to exploit technologies like AI to handle potential epidemics, and also what kind of circumstances would promote digital transformation management. These will be the kind of ongoing issues that persist long after the epidemic abates and the evolving digital transformation of Asia.

It’s too soon to determine what the improvements would look like in any cultural, economic, and structural context. Still, we can be confident that COVID-19 already confirms current movements towards increased Digital payment.