45% users in Southeast Asia think they can live without cash for three days

Recently, in The survey report 《Rise Of The Digital Engaged Consumer》released by VISA, The survey data shows that The scale Of Digital economy in southeast Asia has reached 50 billion and The number Of users has exceeded 200 million.

According to the report, the consumption and payment habits of Southeast Asian countries are undergoing tremendous changes, and the pursuit of a new consumer experience will be particularly prominent.




Across southeast Asia, about 80 percent of respondents said they shop online at least once a month, and more than 60 percent expressed interest in social networking site shopping, according to the report. At the same time, going to an offline bank branch to transfer money is starting to be seen as a time-wasting secondary option. 83% per cent of users surveyed were more likely to log on to online banking, and 70% per cent said they would land at least once a week for mobile banking.

2024: South-East Asia cashless era or will officially come




In VISA’s research, an interesting phenomenon is that more than 43% of Southeast Asian respondents believe their country will be fully cashless over the next five years.

At this stage, 68% of southeast Asian respondents believe they can live without cash for a full day, while 45% of southeast Asian respondents believe they can live without cash for three days. Thus it can be seen, in recent years, the popularization of mobile payment in Southeast Asia and the rise of various types of internet economy, for people to travel without cash has provided great convenience.

Among respondents in various countries, Indonesian users had the highest recognition of the feasibility of “24 hours of cashless travel”, reaching 76%，While users in Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, with the exception of Myanmar, recognized the feasibility of “24 hours of cashless travel” at more than 60%.




The popularity of online shopping and mobile payments has brought great convenience to users in Southeast Asia, while also stimulating their new consumer needs:

More than half (58%) of the users surveyed believe that the price comparison function will bring them a better online shopping experience; In the Philippines, 61% of respondents said the security of online payment systems needs to be improved, ranking first in southeast Asia. Checkout process optimization will become an important factor in improving online shopping experience.

At the same time, social media is also playing an important role in influencing online shoppers’ behavior. On average, users in southeast Asia spend six hours a day on their smartphones, including three hours on social media. 63% of the users surveyed expressed interest in communicating via social media, while half of those surveyed, with the exception of Singapore and Myanmar, said they had purchased goods through social media.



According to the VISA report, the top three points that users in southeast Asia care most about the “online shopping experience” are whether to support the price comparison of similar items (58%), the security of the payment system (53%) and the convenience of the order settlement process (49%).43% of online shoppers said that if the site loads too slowly to wait too long, they would give up shopping on the site and switch to other competitor platforms to buy it.

In addition to traditional online shopping, the popularity of mobile payments at the same time promote the development of Southeast Asian O2O various business forms.

From another point of view, the rise of O2O services has once again driven the popularity of mobile payments, more and more users began to feel efficient and convenient (61%), can freely stay at home Shopping (52%), and can have more consumption options (47%).

Financial reform in southeast Asia driven by mobile payment



The change of consumer consumption habits has finally led to the change of mobile Internet in Southeast Asian financial industry.

There is no doubt that when smartphones have more than 1/3 penetration in Southeast Asia, people are increasingly paying for various bills (35%), Shopping (35%), and even planning travel (27%) on their mobile phones.

According to incomplete statistics, the most popular e-wallets in southeast Asia include go-jek’s go-pay, Indonesian telecom company Tcash, Indonesian financial giant Lippo’s OVO, and Ant Financial’s Dana.

The results showed that 70 percent of respondents in southeast Asia use banking services at least once a week via mobile devices, and 75 percent have at least one banking APP on their phones. In contrast, only 31% of the users surveyed said they would go to a physical bank at least once a week, while in Singapore the figure was even lower to just 12%.

It is worth mentioning that the new payment method, scanning code payment, is widely loved by merchants and users in southeast Asia due to its quick, easy-to-use and low-cost nature.

The results showed that more than 58% of Southeast Asian respondents said they knew about the sweep payment, and 28% of respondents were using the payment method. In Thailand (42%), Vietnam (35%) and Indonesia (31%), sweep payment has become a more popular form of payment.