Why the future of digital wallets depends on interoperability at scale

The Paypers sat down with Irene Skrynova, Chief Customer Officer at Unlimit, to discuss how interoperability will influence user experience and the future of digital wallets.

 

Interoperability is becoming a central theme in digital payments. How do you see interoperability impacting the competitive landscape for digital wallets over the next few years?

We’ve moved past the ‘wallet war’ for the smartphone home screen. That was the battle of the 2010s. Today, we have 5.2 billion wallet users, yet we are living in a paradox of hyper-fragmentation. A wallet that is essential in São Paulo is often useless in Seoul. This isn't a user-interface failure; it’s a structural breakdown in how value is cleared and settled across borders.

The competitive landscape is shifting from the distribution layer to the infrastructure layer. The next generation of successors will be those solving fragmentation problems, rather than those who acquire the most users. In the early wave, wallets competed on cashback and convenience. In this next wave, the winners will be the orchestrators who can unify disconnected regional rails, linking, for example, PIX in Brazil, UPI in India, and the fragmented wallet landscape of Southeast Asia into a single operating environment. We are seeing the rise of infrastructure-led scaling, where the product's value is defined by its ability to navigate compliance regimes and merchant ecosystems as if borders didn't exist.

How can improved interoperability directly improve the user experience and drive adoption of digital wallets?

The ultimate benchmark for any payment product is invisible finality. Currently, the global consumer carries a mental checklist when shopping or travelling cross-border. They have to think about which apps they need, whether their payment method will be accepted, the potential FX spread, and what happens if a transaction fails. This uncertainty is the greatest barrier to adoption. It prevents digital wallets from becoming a primary financial operating system globally.

When interoperability is solved at the infrastructure level, the distinction between a card, a bank transfer, or a QR-code-based wallet disappears for the end user. The wallet simply orchestrates the most efficient rail for that specific transaction in the background via a unified UX for the customer. This creates a compounding cycle of trust: reliable, universal acceptance drives habit; habit drives transaction volume; and that volume provides the data density required to sharpen risk models and improve approval rates. When you remove the uncertainty tax, you fundamentally increase a customer's lifetime value.

From Unlimit’s standpoint, what are the biggest technical or regulatory barriers preventing wallet-to-wallet and cross-network payments today?

The primary technical barrier is the widening gap between the speed of information and the speed of value, a phenomenon of structural settlement asymmetry. In a modern ecosystem, a payment message moves in milliseconds, but the actual capital remains tethered to legacy banking schedules that can still take days to resolve. This creates a massive liquidity trap. We are essentially running a 24/7 digital economy on top of a fragmented, legacy foundation, and the edge belongs to those who can bridge this gap through deep balance sheet strength and automated liquidity management. At Unlimit, we turn this into an advantage by leveraging sophisticated treasury orchestration and substantial capital reserves to ensure merchants are funded regardless of lag in underlying rails.

With new payment methods and ecosystems emerging constantly, what role should providers like Unlimit play in enabling connectivity between fragmented payment systems?

In a hyper-fragmented ecosystem, value migrates from owning a single pipe to orchestrating the entire flow. Global merchants do not want to manage hundreds of different payment integrations or maintain dozens of local entities to access the local markets. They just need a single point of truth that guarantees success, speed, and compliance across every market they enter.

We solve this via the sophisticated interface of a global powerhouse backed by the raw performance and cost-efficiency of local domestic banks and APMs. By owning the full payment stack and the underlying regulatory licences, we eliminate the ‘intermediary tax’ that has traditionally hindered cross-border trade.  By standardising the experience across borders, we enable businesses to focus on their core product while ensuring their capital moves reliably across any rail, whether a traditional card scheme or a local real-time payment network.

Looking ahead, which innovations or industry shifts do you believe will be most impactful on wallet interoperability and cross-border digital payments?

The most significant shift in the next five years will be the transition from message-based systems to true value-based settlement. Traditionally, international payments have relied on banks sending instructions back and forth, with funds settling later. The shift toward on-chain settlement represents a fundamental upgrade to the plumbing of the global financial system, providing near-instant finality.

It’s already gaining traction in B2B and treasury environments. Global platforms paying thousands of creators or contractors across multiple markets can’t afford the delays, costs, and liquidity constraints of traditional correspondent banking. As cross-border payments, a nearly USD 250 trillion market evolves, we expect more activity to move across hybrid rails that combine fiat and digital settlement.

The strategic advantage will go to those who can bridge the gap between traditional fiat systems and these new settlement domains, keeping the complexity hidden while delivering the speed and transparency of a protocol-driven economy.

 

This article/interview is part of the The Paypers` Money Movement in 2026: Trends in AI, Payments & Regulation Newsletter, a source of expert insights on the forces reshaping fintech, payments, and banking, covering fraud and financial crime, AI in fraud prevention and risk intelligence, real-time and cross-border payments, European payments sovereignty and the future of instant rails, stablecoins, agentic commerce, compliance and the evolving regulatory landscape, payments fragmentation driven by geopolitics and regulation, infrastructure bottlenecks in banking modernisation, the shift from generic scale to verticalised, value-added payment models, and digital wallets changing consumer payment behaviour – delivering a clear, data-backed view of what will shape strategy and innovation in 2026 and beyond.

Explore the other contributions in this Money Movement in 2026: Trends in AI, Payments & Regulation Newsletter series for more expert insights:

• Bizum - European instant payments: sovereignty and cross-border interoperability
• McKinsey - Payments in transition: the forces shaping the future of global money movement
• Oliver Wyman - Navigating the future: how agentic commerce is redefining payments
• Triple-A - Stablecoins, the once-in-a-lifetime shift in payments
• UniCredit - Navigating regulatory change: compliance and the future of digital payments
• ACI Worldwide - Global orchestration for a real‑time, APM‑driven payments era
• The Paypers - 2026 fraud forecast: AI, deepfakes, and rising cybercrime risks

 

Author the author

Irene Skrynova, Chief Customer Officer at Unlimit, is an international fintech powerhouse. As an award-winning thought leader, Irene is recognised for her strategic vision and transformative leadership on an international scale. She has played a pivotal role in shaping global customer success strategies and business transformation. Beyond her executive role, Irene mentors emerging talent, speaks and serves on global juries, and leads industry committees to drive inclusive financial leadership.

 

 

About the company

Unlimit is the global growth infrastructure for modern commerce. Through payment processing, multi-currency accounts, BaaS, and crypto on- and off-ramps, Unlimit simplifies international expansion across emerging and developed markets. Our platform bridges local payment ecosystems with advanced financial rails, removing operational complexity and enabling businesses to scale confidently, efficiently, and without financial borders.