How migrant payment behaviour is changing in Europe: 2026 insights

The remittance market has been steadily growing; in 2024, it reached USD 905 billion, up 4.6% from a year earlier. Among other factors, this growth is triggered by digital environment development. Profee, an EU-licenced transfer service, explains how migrant behaviour changes over time – and why these changes are important for success on the market.

72% of Europe’s population pays digitally, with an average person using 2.4 mobile wallets. However, the financial habits of migrants in Europe are not always the same as the locals’ common payment behaviour – and, more importantly, vary depending on their countries of origin and residence. Do Pakistanis in Germany demonstrate the same engagement patterns when sending money home as Ukrainians in Poland? In other words, how do various migrant populations behave across countries? And how does this behaviour change over time, if it does? To answer these questions, Profee has analysed the data for its major corridors and identified the key trends. For years, it has been offering cross-border transfers from Europe with a focus on various destinations, including Asia, Latin America, and West Africa.

Methodology: to illustrate the key trends in the industry, Profee reviewed the data for the same period in the last three years. It retrieved the preferred methods for paying for and receiving transfers in the first quarters of 2024, 2025, and 2026, and compared the spreads across several countries. Since the service does not disclose any potentially sensitive data, this article only features % of certain payment and receiving options from the total in a given period rather than exact numbers. The results of several customer research studies have also been used.

Trend 1: migrants adapt to local ways

Many countries realise that digital payment infrastructure is crucial for their economies. The resulting increase in the government support of local fintech players has led to the rise of domestic, typically bank-owned wallets such as Swish in Sweden or BLIK in Poland.

Newcomers to the country might not be aware of these options in the beginning but, as Profee’s data show, they soon embrace their advantages of convenience and speed. The adoption of BLIK, which has now become the dominant payment method in Poland, is a good example. Its share in transactions from Poland has increased from 21% in Q1 2024 to almost 35% in Q1 2026. If we look specifically at the remittances to Ukraine (one of the major transfer destinations from Poland), the growth is even higher, from 8.1% to 19% respectively.

Across Europe, remittance providers are expanding their integrations with local financial solutions. Profee, for instance, recently added support for Swish in Sweden and MIA in Moldova as part of this broader industry shift.

Nevertheless, the rate of adoption of these new payment tools, both local and global, varies between countries, with some heading towards fully digital economies and others demonstrating a more conservative approach.

Overall, Profee has seen a drop in transfers from bank accounts in the last two years, from 49.2% in Q1 2024 to 36.0% in Q1 2026. The data for Norway show that such transfers have decreased from almost 70% to 44%, respectively. There is a similar dynamic in Poland, where bank transfers have shrunk to 27.5% from 41% over the same period. In the meantime, the payment preferences of the German migrant population seem to follow the opposite trend: transfers from bank accounts have grown from 47.9% in Q1 2024 to 52.2% in Q1 2026.

Trend 2: mobile payment services are mainstream

Adapting to local payment norms is only the first layer of migrant behaviour. What Profee's data shows next is just as important: once senders are comfortable with the payment landscape of their host country, they start optimising. Based on Profee’s customer research, the variable they optimise for is payment speed.

This is why even after adopting BLIK, Swish, or other local options, migrants continue shifting toward the fastest available method at the moment. Manual bank transfers – filling in IBAN, BIC, sort codes – are the first to lose ground. The card itself, once the default digital remittance funding method, is next: senders increasingly refuse to type a 16-digit card number, CVV, and expiry date when a one-tap option exists.

That one-tap option is usually Apple Pay or Google Pay. Technically, the underlying rail is the same as a card payment — the card is tokenised once and then used with a biometric confirmation. For the sender, however, the experience is completely different: one tap instead of a full payment form. For someone who sends money home at least every month, this matters more than most providers realise.

This is why Apple Pay and Google Pay have been growing in Profee transfers across major European markets. Combined, their share has grown from 39.4% of all Profee transfers in Q1 2024 to 44.6% in Q1 2026.

The sequence is what makes this trend important: adapt first, optimise second. Providers who only offer global methods miss the first stage. Providers who only offer local methods miss the second. Winning the European sender requires supporting both – a local wallet layer for initial adoption, and a one-tap global layer for the mature user.

Table 1. Share of Profee transfers funded via Apple Pay and Google Pay, %

	Q1 2024	Q1 2025	Q1 2026
All transfers
Apple Pay	24.5	24.5	26.4
Google Pay	14.9	11.7	18.2
From Norway
Apple Pay	8.7	9.8	23.7
Google Pay	7.1	8.6	14.9
From Poland
Apple Pay	23.8	24.2	24.5
Google Pay	12.4	10.6	12.6
BLIK	21.1	25.0	34.7
From Germany
Apple Pay	23.0	25.0	24.8
Google Pay	11.1	10.7	12.1

Trend 3: payouts demand a corridor-by-corridor approach

On the recipient side, the landscape is far less homogeneous across different regions and countries and is undergoing even more drastic changes. As a result, ‘one-size-fits-all’ is not a viable payout strategy for the remittance industry players.

As discussed earlier, in Europe, the availability of digital wallets has generally led to their wider adoption among senders. In recipient countries, however, this is not always the case. The possible reasons behind this vary significantly between destinations and may include:

• Undeveloped infrastructure/lack of access;
• Regulatory limitations;
• Volatile currency exchange rates, and so on.

 

Table 2. Share of Profee transfers credited to local payout options, %

	Q1 24	Q1 25	Q1 26
Pakistan: mobile wallets	N/A	56.4	13.7
Brazil: Pix	81.4	99.3	94.5

 

In Latin America and the Caribbean, Brazil is one of the leaders in next-gen financial solutions adoption. Its government-sponsored instant payment system, Pix, was launched in 2020 and today has over 150 million users. According to Profee’s data, the overwhelming majority of payouts in Brazil are via Pix, and its share in the last two years has grown from 81.4% in Q1 2024 to 94.5% in Q1 2026.

Across the world in South Asia, Pakistan tells a very different story. Profee manages payouts there through partnerships with major Pakistani mobile wallets, including JazzCash, Easypaisa, and NayaPay. The shift in recipient preferences has been dramatic: in 2025, mobile wallets became the dominant payout method, before bank account deposits overtook them and now account for over 80% of payouts. In other words, the Pakistani corridor has gone through a complete infrastructure transition in a year – a pace virtually unheard of in mature payment markets.

Clearly, no general payout trend exists across the globe. In one region, instant payment rails such as Pix are a winning approach, whereas in another, consumers may still turn to more traditional options like deposits to bank accounts. For international remittance providers, it means they need a tailor-made set of payout options for each corridor, incorporated into a payout matrix.

Conclusion

In cross-border remittances, infrastructure has become the new UX. For most of the last decade, providers competed on app design, onboarding speed, and interface polish. These are now table stakes. For the migrant, design no longer matters. What matters is: can I pay with the method I use every day? Will the money arrive in a way my family can actually use?

The real competitive battleground has shifted to payment rails – which sending methods you accept for funding the transfer (BLIK in Poland, Apple Pay and Google Pay across European markets, local wallets like Swish in Sweden and MIA in Moldova), and which payout methods you support on the receiving side (from Pix in Brazil to bank accounts in Pakistan). There is no universal payout method that works across all major remittance corridors. What’s more, there is no one-fits-all pattern: while migrants from one country may be shifting to new receiving options, others stick to traditional methods.

Remittance providers must thoroughly evaluate each corridor they expand to and adjust the selection of options on both the sender’s and the recipient’s ends of the transaction. Moreover, it is always a continuous process because the environment changes, users’ preferences evolve, and technology moves forward. All these developments affect the remittance flows across the world and must be accounted for.

‘Growth in cross-border payments no longer comes from better apps or lower fees alone. Providing the funding method a sender uses every day and the payout method that works for their family back home is the key to a transfer app's success in 2026. Everything else is a commodity.’

— Sergey Romanov, CCO, Profee

About the author

Ilya Bunin, CMO at Profee, holds an MBA and brings startup experience from the US and Israel. His focus is to understand real needs, test bold ideas, and adapt fast.

 

 

About the company

Profee is an international remittance service that provides cross-border money transfers through web and mobile platforms. The company focuses on transfer speed, security, and competitive exchange rates while complying with international regulations. Its services are available across multiple destinations, with ongoing expansion into additional markets.