Indian government to force nationwide coverage of QR code payments

In order to promote digital payment services on a large scale, the Indian government will force the deployment of QR Code payment services using the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) in all stores.

At this stage, the Indian Consumer Tax Commission has approved the proposal, and the Indian government has said it will provide the National Payment Processing Corporation (NPCI) with a set of necessary support mechanisms to enable them to complete their deployments quickly across India.




According to a previous report by The Times of India, an Indian government official has said stores will receive GST benefits if consumers are willing to pay with QR codes.

This is obviously a very good news, because the policy is bound to stimulate many merchants to encourage consumers to use two-dimensional code payment.

So why does the Indian government suddenly have to “mandatory” the implementation of a QR code-based payment scheme? Indeed, the Indian government has found that digital payments are becoming more popular and a general trend for future payments, potentially bringing disruptive innovation to the entire fintech ecosystem.

On the other hand, QR code payment is also very environmentally friendly, the advantage is that consumers can buy goods and services without the need to take out physical cards to swipe, banks do not have to spend too much money and energy on the business card. In addition, the Indian government also believes that QR code payment can effectively record some necessary transaction information, while minimizing data loss and security vulnerabilities. India also plans to add QR codes to invoices to ensure that every transaction is traceable.



China is the clear leader in global mobile payments, and the move is likely to be an attempt to close the fintech gap with China. At this stage, China already has a lot of very famous payment companies, such as WeChat and Alipay, Chinese consumers have long been used to scanning QR code payment methods. In fact, the two-dimensional code is now used in Chinese restaurant restaurants, wedding gifts, and even beggars to get handouts.

Indeed, mobile payments have become a global trend that could change a country’s social habits in the future, including South Asian countries such as Singapore and Myanmar, which are already rapidly adopting this digital payment method. In ASEAN countries, the consumer penetration rate of QR code payments is also growing exponentially.

The Indian government says many merchants today actually like to accept QR codes because of the high cost of deploying POS machines and mobile POS machines, while the cost of setting up a QR Code network in India is only about 1 dollars.