September 15, 2026

Instant payments: from local adoption to cross-border growth

Jorge Otamendi

Head of Corporates at Getnet Europe

Instant payments have become an integral part of modern commerce. The global market size was valued at $34 billion in 2025, and is projected to grow from $47 billion this year to $499 billion by 2034.

For merchants, this growth represents a significant opportunity. Instant account-to-account (A2A) payments can provide customers with a fast and familiar way to pay while giving merchants immediate confirmation of payment. But for businesses pursuing cross-border growth in Europe, speed is only part of the equation. While Europe is developing common infrastructure for instant payments, the payment methods consumers know and trust continue to differ from one market to another.

This means European expansion increasingly requires merchants to balance international scale with local relevance to make it easy for customers to pay in the ways they already know and love.

A success story from Latin America: what Pix tells us about the potential of instant payments

While instant payment networks vary from region to region, they all exist to give consumers and businesses a convenient and low-cost way to move their money in real time. Two different approaches are emerging. Latin America has largely built consumer-facing instant payment ecosystems around nationally led schemes. Europe, is building common instant payment infrastructure, while consumer-facing payment preferences remain local.

Brazil’s Pix is one of the clearest examples of LatAm’s approach. Despite being less than a decade old, Pix has already demonstrated how government-backed, interoperable payment systems can rapidly transform payment behaviour. Users link a phone number, email, tax ID, or random key to their bank account and scan static or dynamic QR codes on phones to pay bills or shop.

Such was its popularity that within its first year of launch, the system saw over 107 million registered users while handling three times the volume of traditional transfers. Five years on, and Pix is approaching 8 billion monthly transactions.

For merchants looking towards European expansion, the significance of Pix goes beyond Brazil. It’s reach now extends to eight countries: Portugal, Spain, France, the US, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Paraguay.

This demonstrates how quickly a locally relevant instant payment method can move from an alternative way to pay to an everyday part of commerce. It also highlights how deeply local payment preferences can become embedded in consumer behaviour – and why merchants entering new markets need to understand how customers there prefer to pay.

Europe shares infrastructure but payment preferences remain local

Europe has taken a more infrastructure-led approach. The SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) enables participating banks to move Euro payments within seconds across the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).

The EU’s Instant Payments Regulation is making this capability more widely available. Since October 2025, payment service providers in the Euro area have been required to enable customers to send and receive instant euro payments, alongside verification-of-payee checks. Further requirements will apply outside the euro area from January 2027.

But a common infrastructure does not always mean a shared consumer payment experience. Across Europe, consumers continue to favour familiar payment systems embedded in their local ecosystem, including Bizum in Spain, MB WAY in Portugal, Bancomat Pay in Italy, Swish in Sweden and Blik in Poland. These services do not all operate in exactly the same way or rely on the same underlying rails, but they illustrate a common commercial reality: familiarity and trust remain highly local.

For merchants expanding across Europe, the opportunity is therefore not simply to ‘add’ instant payments. It’s to combine pan-European reach with the locally relevant payment experiences customers already know and trust.

Bizum: the instant payments revolution in Spain

Spain provides a clear example of what this looks like in practice. Originally launched for peer-to-peer transfers through banking apps, Bizum has evolved into one of Spain's preferred payment methods for eCommerce. It now has more than 32 million users and reaches up to 95% penetration in Spain, supported by 39 participating Spanish banks.

For merchants, its appeal lies partly in familiarity. Customers select Bizum, enter their mobile number, authenticate through their banking app and receive confirmation of payment. More than 135,000 active merchants now offer Bizum, which has supported more than 300 million online purchases. The average payment takes just 22 seconds.

This is where local payment knowledge becomes especially valuable for international merchants. Offering a payment method is one thing; understanding how to integrate, optimise and manage it effectively within a particular market is another.

Getnet is already one of Spain's largest Bizum integrators and a member of the Bizum Board. One in five Bizum merchants in Spain partners with Getnet, while 60% of Getnet's eCommerce merchants in the country accept Bizum.

As a trusted partner across the full Bizum journey, Getnet supports merchants from onboarding and integration through to reporting and optimisation, helping them capture Bizum’s accelerating growth across key industries. In some verticals, Bizum is already a leading payment method: data shows volume grew 68% YoY in marketplaces, while in passenger transport 87% of payment volume is already processed through Bizum. This makes the ability to offer and optimise it increasingly important for merchants looking to grow in Spain.

The opportunity for merchants expanding across Europe and beyond

For merchants expanding internationally, the opportunity is clear: growth increasingly depends on combining global reach with local payment experiences. As instant payment ecosystems develop, the ability to connect customers with the payment methods they already know and trust becomes a competitive advantage.

That means looking beyond technical readiness. Merchants need the flexibility to support locally relevant payment methods alongside cards and other international options – whether that’s Bizum, MB WAY or Pix – while managing the operational requirements that come with entering and growing across multiple markets.

This is where the right payments partner makes all the difference. From onboarding and integration through to refunds, reporting and omnichannel acceptance, merchants need infrastructure that reduces complexity as they expand across borders. A partner with both international scale and local market expertise makes entering new markets easier. It allows merchants to focus on growth rather than rebuilding their payments stack market by market.

Getnet makes A2A payments work for global merchants. With 1.2 million active merchants globally and experience supporting locally relevant A2A methods, including Bizum, MB WAY and Pix, Getnet combines international scale with local expertise. By helping merchants connect to and optimise the payment methods that matter in each market, Getnet can help turn instant payment acceptance into easier market entry and long-term cross-border growth across Europe.