In a notification dated October 22, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked all payment operators to switch to at least one interoperable QR code- UPI or Bharat QR- by March 31, 2022.
Read on to know more…
RBI Pushing For Interoperability!
In 2019, RBI had set up a committee to study the use of QR codes to process contactless transactions, digital payment system scalability, innovation, awareness, privacy, security as well as interoperability.
According to the RBI data released this year in July, the volume of digital payments using UPI QR was around 25 crore on a monthly basis with over 2 crores UPI QRs been used in the market.
RBI has banned the payment system operators from issuing new proprietary QR codes.
Rather, the operators should work towards interoperability, suggested the national banking regulator.
This move by the RBI is mainly aimed at facilitating payments through any UPI-enabled apps to all QR code issuing firms. For instance, Google Pay users can pay via scanning the matrix barcode issued by any other payment operator like PhonePe, Paytm, BharatPe among others.
How Will This Impact the Payment Operators?
PhonePe launched the interoperable QR code in September 2019 while Paytm also launched this facility in January 2020.
Paytm, PhonePe, and Google Pay have already stopped issuing proprietary QR codes and these new RBI interoperability norms won’t impact them at all, say industry experts tracking the space.
