From Mumbai to Manila: What The Two Countries’ Payment Trajectories Reveal

Money, like water, takes the shape of its container. In India it flows like a river across a continent: thick and unstoppable, touching every city, every village, and every market store. In the Philippines it moves like ocean tides, pooling in Manila’s dense neighborhoods before lapping outward across its seven thousand islands. Both nations are now rewriting the script of how people pay, and both are proving that there is no single way to move money from one hand to another.

Two Geographies, Two Challenges

Scale has been India’s inheritance and its burden. To make payments seamless in a nation of 1.4 billion means designing for extremes: the tech worker in Bengaluru who moves money with a thumbprint, the farmer in Uttar Pradesh who must trust a QR code instead of a folded bill, the migrant laborer in Dubai who sends wages back home through rails that now operate in real time. India is continental in scope, and its digital payments system reflects that ambition: engineered infrastructure designed to carry billions of transactions as if they were grains of sand.

The Philippines is a different puzzle. Its 115 million citizens are not spread across a plain, but scattered across water. To send money in Quezon City is not the same as sending it in a small fishing town in Palawan, where connectivity bends with the weather and ferry schedules matter as much as mobile data. Here, payments must adapt to fragmentation. India builds highways; the Philippines builds bridges between islands.

The Pulse of Technology

India’s leap into digital finance rode on the back of cheap data and mass smartphones. Connectivity became as common as bottled water. When the government introduced the Unified Payments Interface, it was like pouring a river into an already dug channel. Within a few years, UPI was carrying more than twenty billion transactions a month, proof that infrastructure and scale can align if the rails are wide enough.

In the Philippines, the internet took on a different character. It was not infrastructure alone but culture: a nation that lives on social media, whose conversations hum through Facebook and Viber, where apps became not just utilities but companions. Into this intimacy slipped payments. GCash and Maya were not sold as rails but as friends, with colors, mascots, and chat-like experiences. In Manila, sending money through a wallet felt less like a transaction and more like an extension of conversation.

Institutions, Rails, and the Dance of Power

India’s system is state-choreographed. The Reserve Bank and NPCI set the rhythm, and banks, fintechs, and startups danced to the same beat. The brilliance was not in innovation at the edge, but in the quiet discipline of a common rail. It was a centrally built highway where innovation could ride as traffic.

The Philippines is more improvisational. The central bank has been active, mandating the QR Ph standard, nudging adoption in markets and local government offices, but the music comes from the crowd. Consumers began using wallets because they were easier than cash, and institutions followed their lead. It is less orchestra, more jazz. The rules exist, but the solos belong to the wallets that captured the imagination of everyday people.

The Banks and Their Reluctance

In India, banks resisted at first, guarding their ledgers like fiefdoms. But once the rails were laid, resistance crumbled. Today, banks cannot afford not to be digital. They compete not on whether they should play, but on how loudly their voice can be heard in the symphony of apps and APIs.

In the Philippines, banks remain cautious, like guests lingering at the edge of a dance floor. The fintechs arrived first, claimed the stage, and pulled consumers in. Only now are the banks stepping forward, compelled not by regulators but by a cultural tide they can no longer ignore. Where India’s banks were driven by policy, the Philippines’ banks are being carried forward by expectation.

Different Maturities, Shared Ambitions

India’s payments tree is already in full leaf. UPI is the trunk, and new branches—credit overlays, cross-border experiments, embedded financial products—are sprouting each year. The question now is how to deepen the roots: fraud prevention, privacy, inclusion beyond mere access.

The Philippines is still in its growth spurt. Merchant adoption is rising, QR Ph is spreading into public markets and jeepney routes, and half of all retail payments are now digital. The energy is not of saturation but acceleration. The country feels like it is just beginning to climb a curve whose peak is still years away.

Two Tales, One Horizon

It is tempting to call the Philippines a smaller India, or India a Philippines writ large. But the truth is subtler. India shows what happens when infrastructure arrives first, and culture bends around it. The Philippines shows what happens when culture changes first, and infrastructure races to keep up. One is a train running on concrete tracks, the other a flotilla of boats improvising routes across shifting waters.

Yet both move toward the same horizon: a world where paying is no longer a ritual of counting bills or swiping cards, but an invisible act woven into daily life. From Manila to Mumbai, money is learning to disappear, and in that disappearance lies its most profound transformation.

Looking Ahead: The Next Five Years

In the coming years, both India and the Philippines are poised to further transform their digital payment landscapes.

India is set to expand UPI-based cash withdrawal services, enabling users to access cash using their smartphones at over 2 million business correspondents across the country. This initiative aims to enhance convenience for both rural and urban populations, allowing QR code-based transactions as an alternative to traditional biometric or ATM withdrawals. While regulatory approval is still pending, the initiative is expected to promote financial inclusion by simplifying cash access in underserved areas.

Additionally, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) plans to launch a new Aadhaar app in December 2025, enabling users to update their cellphone numbers through live facial recognition, eliminating the need to visit enrolment centres. This app leverages Aadhaar’s biometric records and AI technology for secure, fast, and privacy-first digital identity verification.

The Philippines, on the other hand, is projected to witness significant growth in its digital payments market. The market is anticipated to progress with an annual growth rate of 10.6%, reaching approximately USD 4.42 billion by 2025. From 2020 to 2024, the market achieved a notable CAGR of 12.6%, with future growth projected at a CAGR of 8.8% between 2025 and 2029, expanding to about USD 6.20 billion.

Furthermore, the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) payment market in the Philippines is expected to grow by 14.6% on an annual basis to reach USD 3.21 billion in 2025. The BNPL market experienced robust growth during 2021-2024, achieving a CAGR of 24.2%. This upward trajectory is expected to continue, with the market forecast to grow at a CAGR of 10.8% during 2025-2030.