Consumption across Asia Pacific (APAC) is entering a phase of expansion marked by resilience at the aggregate level alongside widening divergence across income segments, sectors and markets. Visa’s transaction data offers a high-frequency lens on these shifts, revealing how cross-border mobility, digital commerce and artificial intelligence investment are reshaping spending patterns and commercial priorities heading into 2026. Visa aggregates transaction activity across billions of cards and merchants, enabling observation of sectoral momentum and cross-border spending flows as they evolve. Simon Baptist, principal economist for APAC at Visa, underscored the scale underpinning these insights. “Visa processes about $17 trillion of transactions every year,” he said. “That is about the same size as the entire economy of China or the United States (US). If those transactions were an economy, it would be number two in the world.” He added that the team can “track all of this almost in real time because the data is updated daily,” capturing both card origin and spend location across markets. Spending resilience amid uneven growth Recent data from Visa points to resilient consumption across APAC, with overall spending rising by roughly 10% year on year. Baptist described conditions as solid rather than expansionary, supported by post-pandemic normalisation in travel, services access and discretionary activity. Visa’s latest dataset also shows variation in spending growth across markets and income cohorts. The analysis positions payments data as a high-frequency indicator of demand conditions, enabling near real-time observation of how spending patterns are evolving across the region. Digital channels reshape how spending occurs According to Visa, digital commerce now accounts for slightly more than half of regional payments activity. Baptist placed penetration in the mid-50% range, noting that adoption growth is moderating as markets mature although the structural shift remains intact. Migration is most visible in travel bookings and government services, where platform integration and administrative digitisation are reshaping transaction flows. Public sector platforms are becoming a meaningful driver of payment activity. “India is a strong exemplar of this happening,” Baptist said. “More and more government services are occurring online as governments want to put things on digital platforms so they can formalise the economy, increase tax revenue, and make operations more efficient.” As digital participation deepens, spending patterns are being shaped not only by access but also by price pressures emerging across consumption categories. Inflation differentials redirect consumption Consumption patterns are showing early signs of rebalancing following the post-pandemic surge in services demand. Baptist described “a little bit of a shift back towards goods from services,” particularly when travel is excluded from services analysis. Pricing dynamics are driving this adjustment as households recalibrate discretionary spending. “Service inflation has been very high,” he said, noting sensitivity to rising costs in dining and in-person experiences. Goods pricing is moving in the opposite direction. “Goods are getting quite cheap because of geopolitics,” Baptist observed. “Chinese factories are hyper-competitive and producing a lot. Volumes are being maintained at the cost of profit margins, which are often negative or razor-thin.” Lower export prices are feeding into regional markets, reinforcing value-seeking purchasing behaviour and encouraging substitution back towards goods. AI investment amplifies income divergence While price influences what consumers buy, capital investment cycles shape spending growth. Artificial intelligence (AI) influences regional economies primarily through capital expenditure rather than productivity gains. Baptist described AI as “really an investment story,” spanning semiconductors, data centres and enabling infrastructure. Taiwan illustrates the scale of this effect. “For an economy at developed world levels of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, growing at 15% is incredible,” he said. “That is Taiwan’s fastest growth rate in 40 years, and it is entirely about chips.” Income linked to semiconductor supply chains is flowing into consumption, particularly among households exposed to the sector. This concentration of gains is contributing to what Baptist characterised as a two-speed consumption environment. “The typical card is not always spending more,” he noted. “This tells us that the affluent are doing extremely well, while the mainstream consumers are not.” Divergence becomes most visible in discretionary sectors where income sensitivity is highest, with travel standing out as the clearest expression of this divide. Travel consolidates its role as the region’s primary growth engine Travel remains the fastest-growing major spending category across APAC and continues to expand well above the regional average. “For many years now, travel and cross-border spending have been growing much faster than average,” Baptist said, with travel spending rising at roughly 2.5 times the overall rate. He described demand as persistent, adding that “the appetite for travel and spending abroad is unsatiated in APAC.” Visa’s data positions cross-border mobility as a central driver of discretionary consumption growth, reflecting how households are ranking travel above other discretionary big-ticket purchases and protecting holiday budgets even during tighter economic periods. Inbound spending patterns reinforce this momentum while revealing how tourism flows are reshaping destination performance across the region. Japan continues to dominate regional inbound travel spending, which Visa says recorded growth of approximately 25% last year despite already elevated visitor volumes. South Korea has risen to the second-largest inbound destination in APAC, supported by entertainment, gaming and popular culture exports that are attracting regional travellers. Mainland China is registering the fastest inbound growth rate from a lower base. “Mainland China had the fastest inbound growth rate of travel spend,” Baptist said. “It is the fastest-growing market for people to go and spend in.” These flows highlight how outbound demand, inbound tourism and cultural exports are reinforcing travel’s role as one of the most dynamic engines of regional consumption. Affluent consumers anchor tourism expansion Spending within this travel expansion remains highly concentrated. Baptist noted that roughly three-quarters of additional travel spending originated from premium cardholders and affluent segments, particularly in higher-income markets such as Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Wealth concentration and asset exposure are reinforcing this pattern, enabling sustained cross-border discretionary activity even amid broader cost pressures. Agentic commerce signals the next structural shift Baptist also pointed to agentic commerce as a potential transformation in digital transactions. AI agents capable of searching, comparing and purchasing autonomously could reshape platform economics and product discovery. “There is going to be a huge shift in the relationship between buyers and sellers,” he said. “When we all have our own AI agents doing our shopping for us, the way e-commerce operates could change. You might not need websites anymore because you are not looking at them; your agent is reading the code behind the scenes.” Adoption is expected to scale gradually as trust develops. “At the beginning, consumers are going to have to go through a confidence-building process to get comfortable with it,” he said. “We might see it taking off first in smaller transactions.” Consumption growth skews to affluent, travel and digital segments Taken together, Visa’s transaction data suggests consumption growth is concentrating in a narrow set of high-momentum segments rather than expanding evenly across the economy. Baptist stressed the commercial importance of premium positioning. “You have to have a strong affluent offering now,” he said. “If you do not, you will not get any growth.” He identified affluent consumers, e-commerce and travel as the three areas where businesses need strong offerings to capture spending expansion. The data also reflects widening divergence between affluent and mainstream consumers. Baptist pointed to the importance of translating current economic tailwinds into broader-based resilience. “If I were running an economy now, I would be looking to use the support from AI investment and buoyant capital markets to improve life and job creation prospects for the mainstream,” he said. He cautioned that affluent-led growth cycles may not persist indefinitely, adding that “these trends will end at some point, and then you will need to lean on your mass market.” Within this context, near-term consumption momentum appears most concentrated in premium, travel-linked and digitally enabled categories where affluence and cross-border mobility intersect. The longer-term trajectory, however, will depend on how far current income gains extend beyond these segments and whether broader consumer spending strength follows.
