Prime Minister Modi envisage aim to make India, “A Digital India” starts taking a beautiful mold with the BHIM App and the Unified payments Interface. The mold will take new forms with the introduction of “Bharat QR Code”. It is the latest initiative to boost digital transactions that will make the use of QR (Quick Response) codes system for payments across merchant outlets and to enhance existing financial service gateways.
Understanding Bharat QR:
- The Bharat QR is a quick response code, developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in association with MasterCard, Visa and American Express.
- The QR code is a matrix barcode or a two-dimensional barcode that can be scanned and read by standard smart phones.
- The amount will be directly transferred to the merchant’s bank account once the transaction is complete. In short, Bharat QR code will provide customers with an easy scan and pay option irrespective of their card type.
- Both the merchant and the customer will receive instant notification after the payment is successful.
- The method would eliminate the need of PoS machines on a merchant outlet.
- To use the Bharat QR, one needs to have either the BHIM appor the mobile applications of one of the fifteen collaborating banks installed on one’s smart phone.
Working of Bharat QR:
- The Bharat QR works by transferring money directly from your bank to that of your merchant’s.
- This will eliminate the need for recharging mobile wallets such as Paytm, mRuppee, MobiKwik, Oxigen Wallet and the like, or even carrying around various credit and debit cards in your wallet to execute digital transactions.
- There are two types of Bharat QR codes- static and dynamic.
- The static code is one wherein the merchant has the QR code on display and the customer scans it to enter the amount and make the payment.
- The dynamic Bharat QR code, on the other hand, can be used in places such as restaurants, where the merchant will generate a new QR code for each purchase. In this case, upon scanning the code, the amount need not be entered.
Payment system using Bharat QR:
- The amount of money that can be paid via the Bharat QR code depends on your bank’s transaction limit.
- The limit will depend on the amount of money in the linked savings account in the case of debit card transactions and on the assigned credit limit in case of credit card transactions.
- The National Payments Corporation of India has left it up to the banks to devise their own limits on the amounts to be transferred.
- In case the payments are being made via the BHIM app however, the transaction limits have been limited to Rs 10,000 per transaction and Rs 20,000 per day.