Scan Here, Pay There: Southeast Asia Links Its QR Payment Systems
Travellers can increasingly pay with their home banking app across the region. The quieter story is what the links mean for card networks and small merchants.
Walk into a noodle stall in Bangkok, a market in Kuala Lumpur or a café in Jakarta, and there is usually a QR code on the counter. Over the past decade, Southeast Asian countries built national QR payment systems that let customers pay directly from bank accounts or e-wallets. The next step has been to connect them, so that a visitor can scan a merchant's code abroad using the app from home.
Central banks across the region have signed a series of bilateral agreements linking systems such as Thailand's PromptPay, Malaysia's DuitNow, Indonesia's QRIS, Singapore's PayNow and the Philippines' QR Ph. The regional vision, backed by ASEAN, is a web of connections that eventually allows retail payments across borders without relying on international card networks.
For travellers, the benefit is convenience and often a better exchange rate than card or cash conversion. For merchants, especially small ones who never accepted cards, it means foreign customers can pay without extra equipment. Settlement typically happens in local currencies, which proponents argue reduces dependence on the US dollar for small transactions.
The links also affect incumbents. International card networks earn fees on cross-border transactions and have long dominated tourist spending. Direct account-to-account links compete with that business, though card companies still play a large role in online shopping and credit. Remittances are the next frontier: linking fast payment systems could lower the cost of sending money home for millions of migrant workers in the region.
Challenges remain. Each connection requires agreement on exchange-rate handling, fraud liability, dispute resolution and anti-money-laundering checks. Consumer protection differs from country to country, so a disputed payment abroad can be harder to resolve than a card chargeback. Scams involving fake QR codes stuck over genuine ones have also appeared, prompting warnings to check the merchant name before confirming.
Beyond the region, a multilateral project involving several central banks has explored connecting fast payment systems more broadly, which could make the Southeast Asian model a template.
Why it matters: payment infrastructure decides who earns fees and who can take part in trade. Limitation: published usage figures for cross-border QR payments remain small relative to domestic volumes, so the long-term effect is still unproven.
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