Retail electronic payments will become more seamless with the launch of BharatQR code—a quick response (QR) code mandated by the government to enable digital payments without card swiping machines. It eliminates the need of entering the merchant’s ID or phone number to make payments. The customers can simply make payments by scanning the QR code and entering the transaction amount. The amount gets transferred directly from the bank account without the need of a swiping machine. BharatQR is a common QR code jointly developed by all the four major card payment companies—National Payments Corp. of India that runs RuPay cards, MasterCard, Visa and American Express—under instructions from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Besides working as a common interface for the Visa/MasterCard/RuPay platform, BharatQR will also facilitate acceptance using Aadhaar-enabled payments and Unified Payments Interface (UPI). As a customer, to use BharatQR code you need to have a smartphone and must download the bank app that is compatible with BharatQR code.

(Live Mint)