Digital wallets are unbeatable for convenience – easing payments, helping verify your identity, and keeping your funds accessible as you move around.
Until you cross an international border. That’s when regulatory differences, currency conversion issues, and technical glitches can all suddenly get in the way.
At that point, plastic cards or old-fashioned cash may still rule.
Making digital wallets work abroad depends on setting open standards for interoperability, according to the global, public-private OpenWallet Forum begun last year.
“From making payments easier to proving identity, digital wallets can make meaningful differences in people’s lives,” said Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). “But to do so, they need to be interoperable, secure, and useful anywhere we take them.”
Digital wallets are unbeatable for convenience – easing payments, helping verify your identity, and keeping your funds accessible as you move around.
Until you cross an international border. That’s when regulatory differences, currency conversion issues, and technical glitches can all suddenly get in the way.
At that point, plastic cards or old-fashioned cash may still rule.
Making digital wallets work abroad depends on setting open standards for interoperability, according to the global, public-private OpenWallet Forum begun last year.
“From making payments easier to proving identity, digital wallets can make meaningful differences in people’s lives,” said Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). “But to do so, they need to be interoperable, secure, and useful anywhere we take them.”
Source: https://www.itu.int/hub/2025/01/open-standards-needed-to-build-trust-in-digital-wallets/