Around the world the number of people using QR code technology is rising exponentially. A rise initially triggered by the global pandemic has continued unabated. In America alone, the first year of the pandemic saw a 25 per cent rise in QR code usage to more than 65m users. That became 75m last year, will be 83m this year, and be touching 100m by 2025.
Globally, Juniper Research puts the number of people using QR codes for payments will exceed 2.2bn by 2025, an almost 50 per cent increase on the 2020 figure of 1.5bn. that is a staggering number that represents nearly 30 per cent of all mobile phone users across the world.
Those are the sort of numbers and take up that inevitably attract the attention of financial regulators. In Australia the regulator (AusPayNet) has issued new, as yet voluntary, guidelines around the use of QR codes as a payment mechanism.
AusPayNet says the guidelines are directed at financial institutions, payment service providers, merchants, and others in the industry and are designed to encourage consistency. It says: “It is important that consumers and merchants know when they use a QR code it will work the same way every time.”
The rise of financial transactions from mobiles using QR codes will also help fuel an increasing move to digital payments. In the UK, the Payment Services Regulator (PSR) has published a summary report on digital payments looking at the high-level areas it believes need to be addressed to enable even greater take-up of digital payments.
In particular, the PSR speaks about building trust, awareness and understanding of digital payments among consumers and small businesses. The regulator also talks about the need to enable new functionalities and address fraud risks.
It’s here where the take-up of QR codes and systems like our own Onescan payment platform can be really helpful. QR codes are easy to use, the tool to use them is widely available, and they are low cost for merchants and small businesses to implement. There are virtually no barriers to take up.
What’s more, in terms of security, our own Onescan payment platform is fully encrypted and doesn’t rely on a central store of financial data that can be hacked or stolen. That means the users stay in control of their own personal information and the payments they make are simple, fast, and secured using encryption. Our system also meets all the requirements for strong customer authentication that were introduced under the EU-wide PSD2 regulations.
To learn more about our encrypted, secure contactless payments with no upper limit on the payment amount, then click here.