Shop, Scan, Simple! Pay your shopping bills by scanning QR codes

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has launched a new retail initiative, using which you would be able to pay using the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) platform just by scanning QR codes.

Reliance Retail has started accepting these payments in over 200 Reliance Retail stores in India, becoming the first organised retail chain to do so. The facility would be covering all Reliance Retail stores over the coming days.

Also read: From cashless to cardless in a jiffy, Samsung launches Samsung Pay in India

The technology of in-store UPI payment has been enabled through a dynamic QR-code interface, which has been designed by payment aggregator Innoviti. The interface runs on existing point of sale (PoS) terminals-card swipe machines.

Also read: Private e-payment firms will get tough competition from newly launched government-backed rivals

"The payment options being offered by Samsung and Apple are all card-based and expensive. Under UPI, the merchant discount rate (MDR) - the fee borne by the seller to provide services-is 0.25% for payments below Rs 1,000 and 0.65% for all other charges," AP Hota, MD & CEO, NPCI told TNN.

Hota added that the MDR on UPI could come further down in case RBI reduces the fee levied on debit cards, which as per RBI would take some time.

(Image source: QR-codes)