Money at Light Speed: How Digital Banking Is Rewriting Financial Stability Across Asia-Pacific

Digital banking is accelerating financial inclusion and payments across East Asia and the Pacific, but instant transactions and social media can turn financial stress into bank runs within hours. The report urges governments, regulators and financial institutions to strengthen real-time supervision, liquidity stress testing, deposit protection and crisis preparedness without slowing digital innovation.

Digital banking is transforming finance across East Asia and the Pacific, making payments faster and financial services easier to access while creating a new challenge for regulators: a banking crisis that once developed over days can now unfold within hours. A September 2026 study by the World Bank Group's Finance, Competitiveness, and Investment Global Department's East Asia and Pacific regional unit, the Seoul Center for Finance and Innovation and the Bank of Korea says financial safeguards must evolve alongside increasingly fast-moving money.

The benefits remain substantial. Asia and the Pacific now account for nearly half of global digital payments, according to research cited in the study, while regional digital payments grew 20.4 percent year-on-year in 2024. Digitalisation can lower transaction costs, reduce dependence on branches and cash, improve financial inclusion and help banks manage liquidity more efficiently.

Faster Payments Are Reshaping the Development Landscape

Countries across the region demonstrate how quickly digital payment infrastructure can scale. Thailand's PromptPay processed more than 66 million transactions per day in 2024 and had 79.45 million registered numbers by January 2025. Singapore has expanded instant payments through FAST and PayNow, while Indonesia launched BI-FAST in December 2021.

For governments, these systems can improve welfare transfers, tax refunds and other public payments. Businesses benefit from quicker settlements, while households gain more convenient access to financial services.

But speed creates vulnerabilities. Mobile banking allows depositors to transfer funds without visiting branches, while social media can spread concerns about a financial institution almost immediately. The report stresses that technology generally does not cause banks' underlying problems. Weak governance, poor risk management, concentrated deposits and asset-liability mismatches remain fundamental risks. Technology can, however, dramatically accelerate withdrawals once confidence falls.

Silicon Valley Bank illustrates the danger. Depositors attempted to withdraw $42 billion on March 9, 2023, while requested withdrawals reached roughly 85 percent of its deposit base within 48 hours. Signature Bank subsequently lost around 20 percent of deposits in a single day. Credit Suisse ultimately experienced deposit outflows equivalent to 81 percent of its deposit base.

A 30-Day Liquidity Framework Meets an Hour-by-Hour Crisis

These cases raise questions about liquidity regulations developed for a slower financial system. The Basel III Liquidity Coverage Ratio requires banks to maintain enough high-quality liquid assets to survive a standardized 30-day stress period. Digital bank runs can develop far faster.

The report points toward more flexible stress testing rather than simply imposing higher requirements on every institution. Regulators could examine banks according to their business models, concentration of uninsured deposits and exposure to digitally enabled withdrawals. Stress tests could also simulate social-media-driven panic and unusually rapid deposit movements.

Korea provides a significant regional example. MG Community Credit Cooperatives experienced a run in July 2023 amid concerns over real-estate project-financing exposure. Negative online mentions exceeded 5,000 a day. Daily withdrawals peaked at W4 trillion, around $3.1 billion, while deposits declined by approximately W17.6 trillion, or $13.7 billion, within a month—6.8 percent of total deposits.

Coordinated intervention helped stabilize the institution, and more than 12,000 customers subsequently reinstated their accounts.

Real-Time Supervision Becomes the New Financial Safety Net

The Korean experience shows governments why financial supervision needs to move closer to real time. Korea introduced a monitoring system in 2024 that provides deposit-balance information every 20 minutes and can alert financial authorities when predefined withdrawal thresholds are reached. Authorities are also exploring a "bank runnability" index and using news and big-data monitoring to identify emerging risks.

Artificial intelligence could further help supervisors detect abnormal withdrawals, deposit concentration and emerging online threats. Regulators should also ensure that banks can actually access central-bank funding and mobilize eligible collateral during emergencies.

This creates an important agenda for international development partners. Assistance for digital financial inclusion should increasingly be accompanied by support for regulatory technology, cybersecurity, supervisory capacity, liquidity stress testing, deposit-insurance systems and crisis communication.

The private sector also faces a changing risk landscape. Banks and fintech companies can benefit from instant payments, digital lending and lower operating costs, but financial institutions may need stronger liquidity planning, diversified funding, better monitoring technology and operational readiness for sudden withdrawals.

Innovation Must Move Forward Without Leaving Stability Behind

Central bank digital currencies and stablecoins could further reshape liquidity. CBDCs can improve payment efficiency but could allow depositors to move money rapidly from commercial banks into central-bank money during financial stress. The report examines safeguards including holding limits, transaction caps and non-interest-bearing designs.

China demonstrates the potential scale. By July 2024, the e-CNY programme covered 26 regions across 17 provinces, with 180 million wallets and cumulative transactions exceeding ¥7.3 trillion, approximately $1 trillion.

Another challenge is the mismatch between payment systems operating 24/7 and central-bank liquidity facilities that may operate for more limited hours. Governments should therefore review whether emergency funding arrangements can respond at the speed required by digital banking.

The report's central message is not to slow financial innovation. Governments, regulators and development partners should instead modernize supervision, strengthen stress testing, make liquidity buffers usable during crises, improve deposit-insurance awareness and prepare coordinated communication before problems emerge. For banks and fintech companies, better liquidity management and real-time risk monitoring are becoming essential. In an increasingly digital financial system, resilience will depend on whether safeguards can move almost as quickly as the money itself.