The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Fast payment systems, mobile money and digital government transfers let people pay, receive wages and benefits, and access services quickly and cheaply. They can widen financial inclusion and speed emergency transfers, and they concentrate operational and fraud risk. This page sets out how digital payment systems and services work, how use and reliability are measured, and what evidence serves the central banks and agencies that run and regulate them.
GCRI · In development · service level R0
Digital payments are transfers of money made electronically between people, businesses and governments, including fast payment systems and mobile money. They widen inclusion and speed emergency transfers, while instant irrevocable payments attract fraud and outages of central systems stop many transactions at once.
Night-time lights and population density, the footprint of electrified, connected activity, framed on India; each layer is a dated NASA product.
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NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Natural Earth
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Night-time lights and population density, the footprint of electrified, connected activity, framed on India.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
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Digital service interfaces and dependencies. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Fast, low-cost retail payment systems let people and businesses pay instantly at any time, drawing payments away from cash.
Digital government-to-person payments reach recipients faster and with less leakage than cash, which matters in emergencies.
Instant, irrevocable payments attract scams and account takeover, shifting losses to consumers unless safeguards and reimbursement rules exist.
When a central payment system or major provider fails, many transactions stop at once, affecting shops, wages and services.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Fast payment system | A system that moves funds between accounts in seconds, at any time, with immediate availability. |
| Government-to-person payment | A payment from government to an individual, such as a wage, pension or social transfer. |
| Confirmation of payee | A check that the name on a recipient account matches the name the payer entered. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adults making or receiving digital payments | percent of adults | per survey | Global Findex | REPORTED |
| Fast payment system transactions | count per capita | annual | Central bank statistics | OFFICIAL |
| Government transfers paid digitally | percent of transfers | annual | Programme records | OFFICIAL |
| Authorised push payment fraud | value and count | annual | Industry and regulator reports | REPORTED |
| Payment system availability | percent of scheduled time | annual | Operator reports | OFFICIAL |
| Cost of remittances | percent of amount sent | quarterly | Remittance price data | OBSERVED |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| World Bank Global Findex Database | Use of accounts and digital payments | Open, CC BY 4.0 |
| BIS CPMI Red Book statistics and fast payments reports | Payment statistics and fast payment system practice | Public, BIS terms |
| World Bank Remittance Prices Worldwide | Cost of sending remittances | Open, CC BY 4.0 |
| Central bank payment system reports | Volumes, availability and incidents | Public records, terms per central bank |
| Regulator and industry fraud reports, such as UK Finance annual fraud reports | Payment fraud volumes and types | Public, terms per publisher |
Digital Public Infrastructure prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Central banks and payment regulators | How to design and oversee fast payment systems and fraud safeguards | Fraud reviews; resilience assessments |
| Social protection agencies | How to pay benefits digitally without excluding people | Inclusion profiles; transfer evidence |
| Payment service providers | How to reduce fraud and outages | Fraud and availability evidence |
Payments are the point at which DPI touches household budgets most directly. Government-to-person transfers, wage payments, merchant payments and remittances increasingly move through digital rails. When they work, they reduce delays, leakage and the cost of handling cash. When they fail, through outages, fraud or exclusion, the people affected may have no buffer.
Digital payments link front-end services to identity, connectivity and settlement.
Apps, agents, cards and quick-response codes through which people pay. Agent networks matter where connectivity and literacy are limited.
Fast payment systems and switches that connect providers. Interoperability lowers costs but creates shared dependencies.
Social engineering, account takeover and unauthorized transactions harm users, especially those new to digital finance.
Experience with large government transfer programmes has shown that the last mile matters as much as the rails. A transfer that reaches an account is of little use if the recipient cannot withdraw it nearby, does not know it has arrived or loses it to fraud. Studies of DPI payments therefore follow money all the way to its use, not only through the switch.
Aggregate volumes and values show adoption. Individual data are held by providers and require strict safeguards.
Incident reports from operators and central banks show failure modes. Public reporting varies widely.
Show who uses digital payments, for what and what barriers they face.
Dependency analysis of payment architecture, applying payment and financial market technology, with limits set by access to operator information.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.