Comment by Ayesh
2 months ago
About half of the world population has access to some sort of QR based payment system nowadays.
India has UPI, China has Ali and Wechat pay. Almost everyone in these two countries can go weeks without having to use cash.
In South East Asia, Vietnam is leading QR payments. I live in Ha Noi, and I only carry VND equivalent of $15-20 with me, and it sits in the wallet for ages. Everything from gas stations to restaurants to street vendors to even paying taxes, you do it from a QR code. There is no wallet, the money is directly debited from the account.
Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia have similar systems. In Indonesia, a couple of "super apps" had their own wallets, but merged with QRIS a few years back, a lot of Indonesian people can now pay with QR codes, even across wallets and bank accounts.
South America and Asia has already started to replace card payments with the QR payments. Rightfully so.
Europe (41 countries) has instant SEPA.
SEPA is a banking infrastructure layer and it is not consumer focused. Also, only ~60% of European banks adopted it. While Pix was mandatory for all banks to adopt and 80% of Brazilian population already used it.
All banks in Euro (currency) countries have adopted SEPA. You might be thinking of SEPA Instant Payments, which is more recent and adotopion isn't universal yet.
In Spain we have Bizum. You can send money to any phone number. It's instand and, as I understand, it works on top of SEPA.
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