PayMV QR

Overview

PayMV QR is the national interoperable QR-code payment standard of the Maldives, mandated by the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) and operated by the state-anchored payments company Payment Maldives Pvt Ltd. It is the consumer-facing scanning layer that rides on top of Favara, the Maldives' national instant-payment platform. The standard allows a payer to send or receive funds by scanning or generating a QR code rather than entering account or card details, and it is intended to be linked cross-border to India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) so that tourists can pay Maldivian merchants directly from their home bank apps [1]1 [2]2 [3]3.

PayMV QR is a new scheme: the first compliant deployment went live at the end of 2025, with national merchant rollout planned for 2026. Sourcing on its precise technical specification is still sparse, so the technical section below is deliberately conservative.

History

The Maldives Monetary Authority signalled its intent to build a national QR code system with cross-border capability in 2025, with the system to be operated by a newly established company formed in collaboration with Maldivian banks and integrated with the Favara instant-payment platform; launch was targeted for 2026 [3]3.

On 22 December 2025, the MMA formally launched Payment Maldives Pvt Ltd, a dedicated payments company in which the MMA holds a 60% stake, operating under separate management but with continued central-bank oversight. The launch was led by MMA Governor Ahmed Munawwar. Payment Maldives took over operation of Favara and the Automated Clearing House (ACH), and assumed responsibility for the two flagship initiatives already underway: the nationwide rollout of PayMV QR and the cross-border integration of Favara with India's UPI [1]1.

The first bank-side deployment preceded the company's launch: on 16 November 2025, Bank of Maldives (BML) enabled PayMV QR fund transfers inside its mobile-banking app, becoming the first Maldivian bank to comply with the MMA's new payment standards under the Maldives Payment System Development project [4]4.

On the cross-border side, the MMA confirmed that Favara will connect to India's UPI by July 2026, describing it as Favara's first cross-border integration. A national QR system branded "PayMV" was reported to launch domestically (around April) as the infrastructure underpinning the UPI connection, and Governor Munawwar invited local banks and payment service providers to become equity partners in Payment Maldives [5]5 [6]6.

Technical specification

Public technical detail is limited. What is documented:

• Layer model. PayMV QR is the QR presentation/standardisation layer; clearing and settlement run on Favara, the MMA's national instant-payment system. Merchants are settled into their Maldivian bank accounts through Favara [5]5.
• Modes. Both scan-to-pay and generate-a-code-to-receive flows are supported; users transact without entering account numbers or card details [4]4.
• Rollout scope. Initially focused on person-to-person (P2P) transfers, the system is designed to expand to QR-based merchant payments, supporting payments in local currency at market stalls, shops, resorts, restaurants and service providers [3]3.
• Cross-border interoperability. The standard is intended to interoperate with India's UPI, allowing Indian travellers to pay by scanning with their existing UPI apps [3]3 [5]5.

The specific QR encoding standard (e.g. whether it adopts the EMVCo Merchant-Presented Mode payload structure used by most national QR schemes) is not stated in the sources reviewed and is therefore omitted rather than assumed.

Use cases

• Domestic P2P transfers inside bank mobile apps (the first live use case, via BML) [4]4.
• Merchant acceptance at retail shops, market stalls, resorts, restaurants, dive centres and service providers — pitched as a replacement for card acceptance that carries a ~2.5% transaction fee, lowering merchant cost [3]3.
• Inbound tourist payments via the planned UPI link, letting Indian visitors pay Maldivian merchants directly from Indian bank accounts [3]3 [5]5.

Implementations

• Bank of Maldives (BML) — first compliant bank; enabled PayMV QR fund transfers in its mobile-banking app on 16 November 2025. BML operates 42 branches across all 20 atolls, 202 Self Service Banking Centres and 262 ATMs [4]4.
• Payment Maldives Pvt Ltd — scheme operator (MMA 60%), responsible for nationwide rollout; banks and PSPs invited as equity partners [1]1 [6]6.

All licensed payment providers are expected to adopt the MMA's new central-bank standards, of which PayMV QR is the QR component [4]4.

Comparison

PayMV QR follows the now-common small-nation playbook of a central-bank-anchored national QR layered on a real-time payment rail, with a bilateral cross-border QR link to a larger neighbour. The MMA explicitly cited central-bank-affiliated payment companies in India, Australia, Thailand and Jordan as the model for Payment Maldives [1]1. Functionally the closest analogues are other UPI-linked national QR efforts (the UPI interoperability play also pursued by Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Mauritius), where India's NPCI International exports UPI acceptance into a partner country's domestic QR. Relative to those, PayMV is early-stage and tourism-driven: the inbound-payment use case (Indian visitors at Maldivian resorts) is a primary justification, given the weight of Indian tourism in the Maldivian economy.

Fun facts

• The Favara↔UPI link is being timed against fraud pressure: the MMA reported 165 fraud cases to police in November (2025) alone, with losses of about USD 77,821, framing standardised, account-detail-free QR payments partly as a fraud-reduction measure [6]6.
• Alongside PayMV QR, BML also began delivering one-time passwords over WhatsApp (in addition to SMS, email and authenticator apps) — aimed at travellers with unreliable SMS roaming [4]4.

Status

New / rolling out. As of mid-2026, PayMV QR is live for P2P transfers (BML, since Nov 2025), with Payment Maldives (launched Dec 2025) driving nationwide merchant rollout through 2026 and the cross-border Favara↔UPI QR link targeted for July 2026 [1]1 [4]4 [5]5.

Sources

1 Payment Maldives: Taking Maldives' financial sector to the next level — Maldives Financial Review, 2025 2 Instant Payments For All Islands — Payment Maldives, 2025 3 MMA to Launch National QR Code System with Cross-Border Capability — Maaldif, 2025 4 Smart, Cashless Convenience in Maldives: Bank of Maldives Rolls Out PayMV QR and WhatsApp OTP — Maaldif, 2025 5 MMA to Link Favara Instant Payments with India's UPI by July 2026 — Maaldif, 2025 6 Maldives and India to link national instant payment systems by July — Sun Online International, 2026 7 Central bank sets up Payment Maldives to oversee payment reforms — Atoll Times, 2025

Deployments

Found in the following country reports (grep across reports/countries/):

• MV — MV-maldives.md