Standards/qr-ph
QR Ph
Overview
QR Ph is the Philippines' national unified QR code payment standard, established by Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) under BSP Circular 1055 in October 2019 and governed by Philippine Payments Management, Inc. (PPMI) [1, 2, [ph-cro]]. It is EMVCo Merchant-Presented Mode (MPM) compliant and runs on the InstaPay real-time retail payment network [3, [ph-cro]]. The first product, QR Ph P2P, launched in November 2019 for person-to-person transfers; the QR Ph P2M (person-to-merchant) variant followed and is now the primary product [1, 2].
QR Ph's distinctive achievement is making all participating institutions interoperable across one QR code — a customer using GCash, Maya, BDO, BPI, UnionBank, or any other participating bank or e-wallet can pay any QR Ph-enabled merchant via a single code [4, [ph-cro]]. As of Jan–Nov 2025, the underlying InstaPay + PESONet rails processed PHP 22.054 trillion across 4.065 billion transactions (+41.15 % YoY value, +203.6 % YoY volume) PH.
History
Background [[ph-cro], 5]: The Philippine payments landscape before QR Ph was deeply fragmented — each bank and e-wallet (GCash, PayMaya, etc.) had its own QR code, creating consumer confusion and merchant clutter. The BSP's National Retail Payment System (NRPS) Framework identified QR-code-payment standardisation as a priority alongside the InstaPay (real-time) and PESONet (batch) rails launched in 2017–2018.
4 November 2019 — National standard endorsement: PPMI approved EMV® QR Code as the National Standard for payment and financial services, recorded in BSP Circular Letter No. 2019-080 [2].
October 2019 — BSP Circular 1055: Formal establishment of the QR Ph standard, BSP-issued [2, 3].
November 2019 — QR Ph P2P launch [2]: First QR Ph product — peer-to-peer / person-to-person transfers via QR — launched to enable digital fund transfers between individual end users via InstaPay's real-time rail.
Subsequent evolution [[ph-cro], 4]:
- 2020–2022 — QR Ph P2M (person-to-merchant) variants developed; major banks and e-wallets onboard.
- GCash and Maya (e-wallets) integrate QR Ph, alongside banks (BDO, BPI, UnionBank, Landbank, etc.) — broad consumer-facing coverage.
- 2023 — InstaPay-PayNow (Singapore) cross-border linkage operationalises.
- 2024 — Project Nexus (BIS multilateral cross-border instant-payment initiative) — Philippines is a founding member alongside Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and India PH.
- 2025 — Continued QR Ph adoption growth; BSP targets 60–70 % digital retail payment share by 2028 PH.
Adoption growth metrics PH:
- 2023 — 52.8 % digital retail payments
- 2024 — 57.4 % (exceeded BSP's 50 % digital target ahead of 2023 deadline)
- Jan–Nov 2025 — PHP 22.054 trillion combined InstaPay + PESONet transaction value (+41.15 % YoY)
Technical specification
QR Ph is EMVCo Merchant-Presented Mode (MPM) compliant with Philippine-specific extensions [3, [ph-cro], 4]:
| Layer | Description |
|---|---|
| Underlying rail | InstaPay (real-time retail) for P2P + P2M; PESONet for batch / B2B |
| Settlement | Real-time via InstaPay (sub-10-seconds) |
| Standard body | PPMI (Philippine Payments Management, Inc.) under BSP supervision |
| QR format | EMVCo MPM TLV |
EMVCo MPM foundation [5]:
- Payload format: TLV (Tag-Length-Value) plain-text string
- Integrity: CRC-16/CCITT-FALSE appended as field
63 - Underlying symbology: qr-code (ISO/IEC 18004)
- Currency code: 608 (PHP)
| Variant | Description |
|---|---|
| QR Ph P2P | Person-to-person transfers; original Nov 2019 launch product; uses the InstaPay logo on the QR design |
| QR Ph P2M | Person-to-merchant payments; the primary current product; uses the red-blue-yellow QR Ph logo (Philippine flag colours) |
Both are interoperable across all participating institutions — banks AND e-wallets [[ph-cro], 4].
Transaction limits PH:
| System | Limit |
|---|---|
| InstaPay (QR Ph foundation) | PHP 50,000 per transaction |
| PESONet (batch / higher-value) | PHP 250,000+ (bank-dependent) |
Settlement PH:
- InstaPay — real-time, 24/7/365, sub-10-second processing.
- PESONet — batch-processed, same-day or next-business-day, higher limits, B2B and payroll focus.
- QR Ph payments route through InstaPay for instant settlement; PESONet is a parallel rail for non-QR-Ph use cases.
Use cases
QR Ph is the unified merchant-side QR for the Philippines, enabling cross-network payment from any participating consumer app [[ph-cro], 4]:
- Retail point of sale — small merchants (sari-sari stores, market vendors), restaurants, shopping malls, chain retail. Single QR Ph sticker accepts payments from GCash, Maya, BDO Pay, BPI Mobile, UnionBank, and other participating apps.
- Bills payments via biller QR — utilities, telecom (Globe, Smart, etc.), insurance, school fees, government services.
- E-commerce checkout — dynamic QR Ph at online checkout.
- P2P transfers — QR Ph P2P variant; send by scanning recipient's personal QR.
- Government disbursements — social-benefit programmes, tax refunds via InstaPay rails with QR Ph as one consumer-facing channel.
- Cross-border tourism — InstaPay-PayNow (Singapore) linkage enables Filipino tourists in Singapore (and Singaporean tourists in Philippines) to pay via QR with home banking app routing through the bilateral bridge.
- Project Nexus future state — multilateral cross-border interoperability with Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, India as the project goes live (BIS-overseen).
Major consumer apps consuming QR Ph [[ph-cro], 4]:
| App | Provider | Users |
|---|---|---|
| GCash | Globe (Mynt) | 60M+ users — dominant |
| Maya (formerly PayMaya) | Voyager Innovations | Large; second-largest e-wallet |
| BDO Pay | BDO Unibank | Major bank-app user base |
| BPI Mobile | BPI | Major bank-app user base |
| UnionBank | UnionBank | Major bank-app user base |
| Landbank iAccess | Landbank | State bank |
Adoption scale (Jan–Nov 2025) PH:
| Metric | Value | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| InstaPay value | PHP 10.209 T | +56.18 % |
| PESONet value | PHP 11.845 T | +27.66 % |
| Combined value | PHP 22.054 T | +41.15 % |
| Combined volume | 4.065 B transactions | +203.6 % |
Implementations
QR Ph integration is PPMI / BSP-mediated; no significant open-source library ecosystem at the protocol level [[ph-cro], 4].
Production apps consuming QR Ph — see Use cases above.
Merchant / acquirer integrations:
- HitPay — QR Ph payment-gateway and acquirer for SMEs [[6][6]]; provides Scan-to-Pay terminal experience.
- Maya for Business — merchant onboarding via Maya's acquirer platform [[6][6]].
- GCash for Business — merchant onboarding via GCash.
- Major bank acquirers (BDO, BPI, UnionBank, etc.) all offer QR Ph merchant onboarding.
- International PSPs (Stripe, Adyen, etc.) increasingly offer QR Ph as a Philippine-market payment method.
General EMVCo MPM libraries can read QR Ph payloads (since QR Ph is EMVCo MPM with Philippine merchant-account-information templates) — same library compatibility pattern as sgqr, duitnow-qr, promptpay-qr, qris, vietqr.
BancNet publishes the InstaPay QR Participants list, identifying which institutions are live with QR Ph as of any given month [[7][7]].
Comparison
vs. ASEAN EMVCo MPM family (sgqr, duitnow-qr, promptpay-qr, qris, vietqr) — Same technical family; all EMVCo MPM TLV; all central-bank-affiliated operators; all launched within the same 2018–2021 window. QR Ph's distinctive feature is its dual P2P / P2M variant design: the original 2019 launch was P2P; P2M followed. The two variants share the EMVCo TLV format but use different logos. Most ASEAN peers launched with merchant-presented QR as the primary product; QR Ph started with peer-to-peer transfers as the launch use case. Project Nexus (BIS multilateral cross-border initiative) includes QR Ph as a member [[ph-cro], [sg-cro], [my-cro]].
vs. upi-qr (India) — Different wire format (UPI deep link vs QR Ph EMVCo TLV). Both are central-bank-orchestrated national unified payment standards with broad consumer-app participation (GCash + Maya for QR Ph; PhonePe + Google Pay + Paytm for UPI). UPI scale is vastly larger by transaction volume, but QR Ph's interoperability principle and merchant adoption velocity are comparable in Philippine context IN.
vs. pix (Brazil) — Both are central-bank-driven national unified payment standards; both have aggressive growth trajectories. Pix is bank-rail-only with mandatory bank participation; QR Ph is interoperable across both banks and e-wallets (e-wallets are the dominant consumer-app category in Philippines via GCash and Maya). Different ecosystem composition; similar regulatory ambition [[pix-ref]].
vs. m-pesa-ke / ke-qr-code (Kenya) — Both Philippines and Kenya have dominant non-bank consumer payment apps (GCash/Maya in PH; M-Pesa in Kenya) alongside banks. Both have central-bank-mandated interoperability layers (QR Ph in PH; KE-QR in Kenya). Different scale and timing but structurally similar regulatory pattern [[m-pesa-ref], [ke-qr-ref]].
Fun facts
Philippines achieved its 50 % digital retail payment target ahead of the 2023 deadline — reached 52.8 % in 2023 and 57.4 % in 2024, with BSP now targeting 60–70 % by 2028 PH. The combination of QR Ph's unified standard + GCash's market dominance + InstaPay's instant rails + government-disbursement digitisation created an unusually fast cashless trajectory by ASEAN standards.
GCash dominates QR Ph consumer adoption with ~60 million users PH — in a country of ~115 million population, this is one of the highest per-capita adoption rates of any single payment app worldwide. GCash's structural advantage is its bundling with Globe Telecom mobile services; the parent operator subsidises onboarding cost-of-acquisition through telecom-customer cross-marketing.
The +203.6 % YoY transaction volume growth in Jan-Nov 2025 PH is one of the steepest growth curves recorded for a national payment system at this scale. The InstaPay + PESONet combined volume more than tripled in one year — driven by QR Ph adoption, government-disbursement digitisation, and post-pandemic continued cashless preference.
Philippines is a founding member of Project Nexus — the BIS-overseen multilateral cross-border instant-payment initiative connecting Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, plus India as founding member PH. Project Nexus's design goal is to replace the bilateral-link-per-country-pair pattern (currently used by SGQR ↔ DuitNow, PromptPay ↔ PayNow, etc.) with a single multilateral hub — and Philippines is positioned to benefit from this as cross-border consumer payments grow.
QR Ph design uses Philippine flag colours (red-blue-yellow) in its logo [[ph-cro], 4] — making the standard immediately visually identifiable as Filipino national infrastructure rather than a private-company product. The distinct logo distinguishes QR Ph from the older bank-and-e-wallet-specific QR codes that preceded it.
Status
Active, growing fast, expanding cross-border [[ph-cro], 4]:
- 57.4 % digital retail payment share (2024) — exceeded 50 % target ahead of schedule
- PHP 22.054 trillion combined InstaPay + PESONet value (Jan-Nov 2025)
- 4.065 billion transactions (Jan-Nov 2025, +203.6 % YoY)
- All major banks and e-wallets participate (BDO, BPI, UnionBank, Landbank, Metrobank, GCash, Maya, etc.)
- InstaPay-PayNow (Singapore) cross-border linkage live
- Project Nexus founding member — BIS multilateral cross-border initiative
Strategic trajectory PH:
- BSP target: 60-70 % digital retail payments by 2028
- Project Nexus rollout — will multilateralise cross-border QR connectivity with Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, India
- PHQR Global (anticipated branding for cross-border outbound) following the JPQR Global / VietQR Global model
- ISO 20022 messaging continued adoption across the Philippine payment ecosystem
- GCash / Maya competition continues to drive consumer-app feature innovation
No deprecation planned. QR Ph is the Philippines' strategic national payment standard with a clear multi-year scaling and internationalisation roadmap.
Sources
[6]: https://hitpayapp.com/blog/activating-qr-ph-for-your-brick-and-mortar-store-in-2025-hitpay-scan-to-pay-vs-maya-qr) [7]: https://www.bsp.gov.ph/PaymentAndSettlement/QR%20Ph%20P2P%20Participants.pdf [8]: https://www.transfi.com/blog/philippines-payment-rails-how-they-work---from-instapay-pesonet-to-gcash-maya-real-time-transfers [9]: https://fintechnewsph.com/qr-ph-explainer-2025-how-to-pay/ [10]: https://www.spot.ph/newsfeatures/adulting/103782/qr-ph-code-a5229-20230216 [ph-cro]: ../countries/PH-philippines.md [sg-cro]: ../countries/SG-singapore.md [my-cro]: ../countries/MY-malaysia.md [in-cro]: ../countries/IN-india.md [pix-ref]: ../standards/pix.md [m-pesa-ref]: ../standards/m-pesa-ke.md [ke-qr-ref]: ../standards/ke-qr-code.md
- QR Ph P2P FAQs — BSP
- QR Ph Business Guide — Xendit
- QR Ph P2M FAQs — BSP
- 7 Questions about QR Ph Answered — Maya
- BSP moves to implement national QR — BusinessMirror
- [QR Ph at brick-and-mortar — HitPay][6]
- [QR Ph P2P participants — BSP / BancNet][7]
- [Philippines payment rails — Transfi][8]
- [QR Ph Explainer 2025 — Fintech News PH][9]
- [QR Ph and merchant list — Spot.ph][10]
- [PH-philippines.md][ph-cro]
Deployments
Found in the following country reports (grep across reports/countries/):
- PH — PH-philippines.md