AI Is Reshaping Payments and E-Commerce in Asia-Pacific — But Not Evenly

A new report from ResearchAndMarkets.com, “AI in Asia-Pacific's Digital Payments and E-Commerce Market 2025,” highlight how AI is becoming embedded in digital commerce and payments across the region. It also makes clear that while adoption is accelerating, the path is far from uniform.

The Asia-Pacific region has long been at the forefront of digital payments. What’s changing now is the depth of AI integration—particularly generative AI—and the competitive gap emerging between markets that can scale AI effectively and those that can’t.

China and High-Growth Markets Lead the Way

The report underscores China’s continued leadership. By mid-2024, over 80% of decision-makers in China reported using generative AI, and by 2025 AI is being used broadly for product discovery, customer support, fraud detection, and transaction optimization.

India and Southeast Asia are close behind. In India, over 90% of individuals reportedly use AI regularly, driven by mobile-first platforms, large digital populations, and fewer legacy constraints. These markets are moving fast—not because they have perfect systems, but because they’re building digital infrastructure and AI together.

Advanced Economies Move More Carefully

In contrast, countries like Japan, South Korea, and Australia are adopting AI at a more deliberate pace. Regulatory complexity, workforce readiness, and corporate governance structures slow down deployment—even as technical capability exists.

By early 2025, about half of individuals in Japan used AI regularly—far below India’s rate, but still significant. This highlights a familiar pattern: maturity and regulation can temper speed, even when capital and talent are available.

Competitiveness Gains — and Structural Constraints

Across payments, e-commerce, and financial services, companies are using AI to:

• Improve operational efficiency

• Enhance fraud detection and risk monitoring

• Optimize cross-border payments

• Personalize customer interactions

The economic impact is meaningful. Firms in Southeast Asia expect AI and GenAI to reduce total costs by 7–9% by 2027.

But the report is equally clear about the barriers:

• Talent shortages

• Data quality and governance challenges

• Infrastructure limitations

• Cybersecurity and privacy risks

These are not edge cases—they are structural constraints. AI can enhance competitiveness only where data is accessible, normalized, and governed.

My Take

The most important takeaway isn’t that AI is spreading across payments and e-commerce—it’s how unevenly it’s doing so. When surveys report high adoption level of AI it's by far very basic and common use cases that almost anyone uses. It's like saying you use Google in 2002...

Having AI involved in payments is great, but being automation and AI decision is still elusive and will likely remain so in the next year or two. We've seen elsewhere that "human in the loop" is still the most prevalent solution when it comes to high risk use cases.