NEPALPAY QR officially launches in Nepal with different BFIs; MoBanking customers of different institutions to enjoy wider option of QR payment
NEPALPAY QR, as an implementing infrastructure of NepalQR, is now operational that went live recently with a few of the BFIs and PSPs. An official announcement was made in this regard at a joint Press Meet organized in the presence of Mr. Ashoke SJB Rana, CEO of Himalayan Bank Ltd., Mr. Nischal Raj Pandey, CEO of Sanima BankLtd., Mr. Bishal Sigdel, Chief Strategy Officer of NIC Asia Bank Ltd., Mr. Ghanshyam Dhungel, Chief Business Officer of Kamana Sewa Bikash Bank Ltd., Mr. Binod Raj Paudel, Chief Manager of Samriddhi Finance Company Ltd., Mr. Pranaya Rajbhandari, CEO of Focusone Payment Solutions Pvt. Ltd. and Mr. Neelesh Man Singh Pradhan, CEO of NCHL along with the other officials and various media representatives.
NEPALPAY QR has been implemented by NCHL as per the NepalQR standards published by Nepal Rastra Bank and as part of the National Payment Switch. It works as an independent QR scheme and allows QR interoperability at the merchant level and network level. The infrastructure is expected to support and accelerate the current growth of QR transactions in Nepal. The representatives from various banks PSP and NCHL during the Press Meet pledged to further emphasize and promote QR-based transactions.
The mobile banking applications of Himalayan Bank Ltd (HI-MB), Sanima Bank Ltd. (Sajilo e-banking), Samriddhi Finance Ltd., and connectIPS mobile app have been enabled to scan and pay with NEPALPAY QR. Currently, there are total of1.4 million mobile banking users of HBL, SANIMA and Samriddhi Finance, MOCO, and bank users of connectIPS, who will be directly benefited. Similarly, Himalayan Bank Ltd., NIC Asia Bank, Kamana Sewa Bikash Bank, Samriddhi Finance, and Focusone Solutions have also started to acquire merchants for NEPALPAY QR. Himalayan Bank and Focusone have implemented merchant-level interoperability such that a single QR can be scanned for payment through multiple networks of VISA, Union Pay, AliPay, and NEPALPAY. Within a week time of its rollout, the respective BFIs and the PSP have already acquired close to 5,000 merchants.
NEPALPAY QR has also been added as an option within payment gateway of NCHL provided to the Government of Nepal, such that the general public will now be able to scan QR from its mobile banking app, wallets and connectIPS app to initiate revenue payment to the GoN.
NCHL has been facilitating the member BFIs, PSPs and PSOs for rollout and adoption of various instruments and use cases of National Payment Switch, corresponding to which it has recently completed the Phase I of NPS related to non-card based retail payments. 40 BFIs and 6 PSPs have already subscribed for the implementation of National Payment Switch, while others are also in the process of onboarding and required testing. Other instruments and use cases that have been rolled out through NPS include virtual payment address based fund transfer (NEPALPAY Instant), request to pay as debit instrument (NEPALPAY Request), Account Tokenization, Biller Gateway for service payment interoperability, Wallet to wallet transfers and PSO settlements.
