VISA has announced its support of the new global QR Code Payment Specifications from EMVCo, the global technical body that manages the EMV Specifications.
The specifications cover consumer-presented and merchant-presented QR code use cases for digital payment acceptance.
QR Codes are two-dimensional machine-readable barcodes used to facilitate mobile payments at the point-of-sale.
Visa and the other EMVCo members worked to develop these new globally interoperable EMV specifications.
Visa has already successfully enabled the merchant-presented QR technology in 15 countries around the world, with India, Kenya and Nigeria currently live in market with both bank and merchant partners.
“We’ve already seen tremendous progress towards adoption of standardized, interoperable QR code payment systems in the developing world,” said Sam Shrauger, SVP, Digital Products, Visa.
“We are working with governments and central banks in countries like India to develop and implement QR code payment solutions that provide the convenience and security that are synonymous with Visa and help the journey toward a cashless future.”
Easy implementation
mVisa allows consumers to pay for goods and services by scanning a QR code on a smartphone or entering a merchant number into their feature phones.
Payment goes straight from the consumer’s Visa account into the merchant’s account and provides real-time notification to both parties.
For merchants eager to harness the power of QR code payments, the Visa Ready Programme has adopted the interoperable QR standards to develop tools and capabilities, which help easy generation and deployment of QR code merchants by banks, processors and merchant aggregators.
Once enrolled, merchants can freely accept payments from any country or bank given mVisa’s interoperability while trusting Visa will securely and efficiently process each transaction.
Cashless future
Already, 33 banks and more than 328,000 merchants across India, Kenya and Nigeria have adopted the interoperable standards, as they accelerate their QR code digital payment programmes.
Reserve Bank of India has encouraged the adoption of standardized QR code payments to provide access to low-cost, secure digital payments to millions of consumers and merchants.
Visa intends to replicate this success in 12 other countries where mVisa has been enabled namely Cambodia, Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda and Vietnam.
A business desk report