QRIS Cross-Border

Overview

QRIS Cross-Border is Bank Indonesia's programme to extend its domestic Quick Response Code Indonesia Standard (QRIS) beyond Indonesia, enabling two-way QR payments: Indonesians scanning partner-country merchant QR codes abroad ("outbound"), and visitors from partner countries paying at QRIS merchants in Indonesia ("inbound"). Settlement runs on a local-currency transaction (LCT) framework so that users see prices in their home currency while merchants are paid in theirs, cutting conversion cost and reducing reliance on the US dollar [2]2 [6]6. The programme is a deliverable of the ASEAN Regional Payment Connectivity commitment and Indonesia's Payment System Blueprint 2025 [2]2.

History

QRIS was launched domestically on 17 August 2019 by Bank Indonesia and the Indonesian Payment System Association (ASPI) as a single national QR standard unifying non-cash methods for P2P and person-to-merchant payments [1]1. Cross-border expansion then proceeded country by country:

Partner	Counterpart scheme	Pilot	Full launch
Thailand	Thai QR / PromptPay	17 Aug 2021	29 Aug 2022
Malaysia	DuitNow	27 Jan 2022	8 May 2023
Singapore	NETS QR / SGQR+	—	17 Nov 2023
Japan	JPQR Global	—	17 Aug 2025
China	(PBoC interconnection)	17 Aug 2025 (trials)	30 Apr 2026
South Korea	Seoul Pay / Jeju Pay	—	1 Apr 2026

[1]1 [2]2 [7]7

Japan was the first non-ASEAN country to adopt QRIS cross-border, launched on 17 August 2025 to coincide with Indonesia's independence-day celebrations [1]1.

Technical specification

• Merchant QR acceptance abroad (outbound). Indonesian travellers scan a partner-country merchant's QR code through their domestic Indonesian bank or e-wallet app, without currency exchange or international card fees [1]1.
• Foreign QR acceptance inbound. Visitors from partner countries pay at Indonesian QRIS merchants using their home apps [1]1 [6]6.
• Local-currency settlement (LCT). The LCT framework settles cross-border QR payments in the participating countries' respective local currencies, using direct currency quotation to lower cost and FX-risk exposure [6]6.
• Common QR alignment. Linkages connect each side's national QR scheme (e.g. PromptPay, DuitNow, NETS QR) so a single mobile-phone scan resolves the cross-border payment [6]6.

Use cases

• Tourists and business travellers paying merchants abroad with their home wallet, no cash exchange [1]1.
• Inbound tourism spend by partner-country visitors at Indonesia's tens of millions of QRIS merchants [1]1.
• A planned pilot integrating Saudi Arabia's Nusuk card for Hajj/Umrah pilgrims (2026) [1]1.

Implementations

• QRIS domestically reached roughly 50.5 million users and 32.71 million onboarded merchants, with transaction volume surging 226.54% year-over-year in 2024 [1]1.
• Cross-border access is delivered through Indonesian banks' and e-wallets' existing QRIS apps; on the partner side, the counterpart national QR networks (PromptPay, DuitNow, NETS QR, JPQR, etc.) carry the transactions [1]1 [2]2.
• QRIS Tap (NFC-based contactless) launched March 2025, extending the standard beyond camera-scanned codes [1]1.

Comparison

QRIS Cross-Border and the broader ASEAN Regional Payment Connectivity (RPC) are complementary rather than competing. RPC is the multilateral umbrella under which ASEAN central banks agreed to interlink national QR and fast-payment systems; connected QR schemes include Cambodia's KHQR, Indonesia's QRIS, Lao QR, Malaysia's DuitNow, the Philippines' QR Ph, Singapore's PayNow, Thailand's PromptPay and Vietnam's VietQR [6]6. QRIS Cross-Border is Indonesia's bilateral implementation of that vision, executed as a series of country-to-country links and notably the first to reach non-ASEAN partners (Japan, China, South Korea) [1]1. Compared with the account-to-account PromptPay–PayNow model (mobile-number P2P transfers), QRIS Cross-Border is centred on merchant QR acceptance and a local-currency settlement design aimed at de-dollarisation [2]2 [6]6.

Fun facts

• Japan became the first non-ASEAN country to accept QRIS cross-border, launched 17 August 2025 on Indonesia's independence day [1]1.
• The programme is explicitly framed as a tool to reduce dependence on the US dollar in regional settlements via local-currency transactions [6]6.

Status

Live and expanding. As of 2026 the outbound/inbound network spans Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan and China, with South Korea joining (full launch 1 April 2026) and the China link officially launching 30 April 2026 [1]1 [7]7. Indonesia continues to pursue further non-ASEAN partners under the LCT framework [6]6.

Sources

1 QRIS — Wikipedia 2 Launch of Cross-border QR Payments Linkage between Indonesia and Singapore — Monetary Authority of Singapore, 2023 3 Indonesia — Banking QR/Barcode Standards Report — Barcoder corpus, 2025 4 Bank Indonesia launches QRIS cross-border payment system with China — ANTARA News, 2026 5 Indonesians can use QRIS in Japan and China starting August 17, 2025 — ANTARA News, 2025 6 Indonesia, China Launch Cross-Border QRIS Payment / ASEAN RPC local currency settlement — Yicai Global, 2026 7 BI Expands QRIS Links to Seven Countries to Reduce Dollar Reliance — Jakarta Globe, 2026

Deployments

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

• ID — ID-indonesia.md

Regions / aggregations not mapped to a single country

• Indonesia (outbound)