SIB UPI QR

TypeQR Code

PrimaryIN

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SIB UPI QR

Overview

SIB UPI QR — marketed by the bank as SIB UPI QR Scan & Pay and, as a merchant product, SIB UPI-POS — is South Indian Bank's deployment of India's upi-qr standard [2, 3]. It is not a distinct wire format: the QR is an ordinary NPCI UPI deep link of the form upi://pay?pa=<vpa>&pn=<name>&am=<amount>&cu=INR&..., identical in structure to every other bank's UPI QR. What is specific to South Indian Bank ("SIB") is the deployment: the merchant Virtual Payment Address (VPA) sits on SIB's NPCI handle @sib (e.g. <merchant>@sib), the funds settle into a SIB account, and the merchant-acquiring relationship is with SIB [4, 5].

Because UPI QR is interoperable by design, a SIB-issued merchant QR is scanned and paid by any UPI app (PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm, BHIM, other bank apps), and a SIB customer can scan any merchant's UPI QR regardless of which bank issued it [2, in-cro]. This page documents SIB's role as a UPI participant; the canonical technical reference is the parent standard, upi-qr.

History

South Indian Bank Ltd was registered under the Indian Companies Act on 29 January 1929 and commenced business the same day from a single office at Round South, Thrissur, Kerala [6]. It became a Scheduled Bank under the Reserve Bank of India Act on 7 August 1946 and was the first private-sector scheduled bank in Kerala to be licensed under Section 22 of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, on 17 June 1957 [6]. The bank has a long track record of early technology adoption: it deployed in-house branch automation in 1992, the same year it became the first private bank to open an exclusive NRI branch and a currency chest on behalf of the RBI, and it pioneered an early full-scale Core Banking System rollout among Kerala-headquartered banks [6, 7]. By 31 December 2024 it operated 955 branches/service outlets and 1,290 ATMs/CRMs across 26 states and 4 union territories, with 9,369 employees as of 31 March 2025 [6].

UPI itself was launched by NPCI on 11 April 2016 and made publicly available with a first wave of member-bank apps in August 2016 [upi-ref, 1]. South Indian Bank's consumer UPI app SIB M-Pay went live shortly after, on 5 September of the same launch wave [7]; it was later superseded by the unified mobile-banking app SIB Mirror+ (developer: "The South Indian Bank Ltd"; Apple App Store ID 1184796899, available since at least 2017) which absorbed UPI send/receive and @sib VPA management into the bank's main consumer surface [8, 5]. The merchant collection app SIB UPI-POS (com.sib.mpos) followed, surpassing 100,000+ installs on Google Play with a 4.0/5 rating over 288 reviews as of mid-2026 [4].

SIB's UPI deployment has tracked the NPCI roadmap rather than running a separate product timeline: UPI 1.0 in 2016, UPI 2.0 (signed merchant QR, overdraft, blocked mandates) in 2018, and the UPI 3.0 generation of features from 2024 onward [upi-ref]. Recent SIB Mirror+ release notes record the cadence — Recurring UPI Mandates / AutoPay in v8.2.9 (13 February 2025), Foreign Inward Remittance through UPI from Singapore in v8.2.17 (16 July 2025), and biometric authentication for UPI transactions up to ₹5,000 in v8.4.0 (May 2026) [8]. The bank reported "98 % of our transactions are conducted digitally" in a 2025 industry interview, alongside the rollout of voice-command UPI, NFC Tap & Pay and the UPI Circle delegated-payment feature [9].

Technical specification

SIB UPI QR is, at the wire level, identical to upi-qr — see that page for the authoritative spec. The QR encodes a upi://pay URI inside a standard qr-code symbol; when scanned, any UPI-compliant app opens with the payee details pre-filled [upi-ref, 2].

upi://pay URI parameters (NPCI, shared by all UPI QRs) [upi-ref]:

Parameter	Description	Required
`pa`	Payee Address — the VPA, e.g. `merchant@sib`	Yes
`pn`	Payee Name (URL-encoded)	Yes
`mc`	Merchant Category Code	For merchants
`tid`	Transaction ID	Optional
`tr`	Transaction Reference	Optional
`am`	Amount in INR	Optional (omit for user-entered)
`cu`	Currency code (always `INR`)	Recommended
`tn`	Transaction Note	Optional
`sign`	Cryptographic signature (UPI 2.0+ signed QR)	For signed-merchant QRs

What is SIB-specific is the VPA, not the format. The merchant VPA is issued on SIB's NPCI handle [4, 5]:

<merchant-handle>@sib

The @sib suffix is the NPCI-registered PSP handle that routes the collection request to South Indian Bank, which resolves it to the underlying IFSC + account and settles the funds [upi-ref, 4].

Sample static SIB UPI QR payload:

upi://pay?pa=southindianbank@sib&pn=SIB%20Merchant&cu=INR

QR modes in the SIB UPI-POS product [2, 3]:

Static QR — a printed standee/sticker bearing the merchant VPA, provided by the bank; the payer enters the amount.
Dynamic QR — the SIB UPI-POS app generates a per-transaction QR after the cashier keys in amount and bill number; the customer scans and the amount is pre-filled.

Settlement rides the underlying UPI rail with NPCI as switch operator — funds move in seconds, 24/7/365, exactly as for any UPI QR [upi-ref]. Signed merchant QR (UPI 2.0, SHA256-with-RSA512) and the per-transaction limits are properties of UPI itself, not of the bank's implementation [upi-ref].

SIB-specific commercial parameters [2, 3]:

MDR (transaction charge): 1.2% of transaction value (subject to revision).
Per-transaction limit: ₹1,00,000 (₹1 lakh), per NPCI UPI guidelines.
RuPay credit card on UPI-POS: SIB enables RuPay credit-card transactions through UPI-POS — an NPCI feature surfaced in the SIB merchant product.

Use cases

SIB UPI QR serves the same use cases as UPI QR generally, scoped to South Indian Bank's customer and merchant base [2, in-cro]:

Merchant collection (Scan & Pay / UPI-POS) — a SIB merchant displays a @sib QR (printed standee or app-generated dynamic QR); the customer pays from any UPI app and funds settle to the merchant's SIB account. The app offers a real-time dashboard (recent transactions, history, downloadable UPI-POS statement) and voice-based confirmation of successful payments [2].
Multi-counter retail — the SIB UPI-POS app can be deployed across multiple counters or shops [2].
Person-to-person transfers — SIB customers send/receive via @sib VPAs through SIB Mirror+ / the legacy SIB M-Pay app; instant and free for both parties [4].
Bill payments and e-commerce checkout — dynamic upi://pay QRs generated per transaction; SIB Mirror+ also supports UPI mandates / recurring AutoPay [5].

Transaction limits follow NPCI UPI rules rather than bank-specific ones (P2M/P2P up to ₹1,00,000; P2M unverified offline ₹2,000) [2, in-cro].

Implementations

There is no SIB-specific QR library — and there should not be one, because the format is plain UPI. Any NPCI-UPI QR encoder produces a valid SIB merchant QR simply by setting pa=<merchant>@sib. Pointing an open-source UPI encoder at an @sib VPA is all that "SIB support" requires.

UPI-specific encoders (build the upi://pay payload):

Repo	Language	Stars	License	Last release	Notes
bhar4t/upiqr	TypeScript	30	MIT	v1.3.18, Jan 2023	NPCI-compliant `upi://pay` builder, emits base-64 QR PNG + intent URL [10]
adityavijay21/upiqr	TypeScript	3	MIT	2025	Newer fluent-API rewrite; PNG/SVG/UTF-8 output [11]
Pratyay360/upiqrcode	Rust → WASM	2	Apache-2.0	2024	WebAssembly UPI QR SVG generator, npm-distributed [12]

Generic QR encoder/decoder (handles the symbol layer):

Repo	Language	Stars	License	Last release	Notes
paulmillr/qr	TypeScript	339	dual MIT / Apache-2.0	v0.6.0, Apr 2026	Zero-dep QR encoder and reader (camera feed, file, SVG/PNG); decodes any `upi://pay?...` string from a SIB QR [13]

Decoding a SIB UPI QR requires only (a) a generic QR reader to extract the upi://pay?… URI and (b) a standard URL/query-string parser to split out pa, pn, am, cu, tn. On Android, the OS forwards the upi:// intent directly to any installed UPI app; on iOS it is routed via Universal Links — neither relies on an SIB-specific decoder library [upi-ref].

SIB's own apps (closed-source, distributed via app stores):

SIB UPI-POS (com.sib.mpos, "The South Indian Bank Ltd") — the merchant collection app that generates static/dynamic QRs and tracks transactions; 100,000+ installs, 4.0★ over 288 reviews as of mid-2026 [4].
SIB Mirror+ (com.SIBMobile, Apple ID 1184796899) — the consumer mobile-banking app providing UPI send/receive, scan-to-pay, AutoPay/recurring mandates, Singapore-corridor inward remittance, biometric authorisation for low-value UPI; available in 9 languages [5, 8, 9].

The genuinely SIB-specific integration work is not at the QR layer but at the PSP/bank layer — merchant onboarding (apply at a branch or via sms@sib.co.in), VPA issuance on the @sib handle, and settlement into SIB accounts — done through South Indian Bank's own channels rather than open source [2, 4].

Comparison

vs. upi-qr (the parent standard) — SIB UPI QR is UPI QR; the only difference is the deployment context (the @sib handle and SIB as the settling bank). Everything about symbology, URI format, signing and settlement is inherited unchanged. This page exists to document the bank deployment, not a new format.

vs. bharat-qr (India, parallel standard) — Like all UPI participants, SIB's UPI QR sits on the UPI-only upi://pay deep-link rail rather than the EMVCo-TLV, card-network-interoperable bharat-qr. Tellingly, SIB also runs a separate "SIB Bharat QR" merchant app (a Worldline-built product) for the card-network-interoperable variant — the two coexist within the one bank, mirroring the national picture where UPI QR dwarfs Bharat QR (658 M vs 67 M deployed) IN.

vs. other banks' UPI QR (HDFC @hdfc, ICICI, SBI, Paytm @paytm, etc.) — Functionally identical at the QR layer; banks differ only by handle (@sib vs @hdfc …) and by acquiring/onboarding terms and MDR, not by wire format. UPI's interoperability mandate means a payer never needs to know which bank issued the QR [in-cro, upi-ref].

vs. PSP-led UPI wallets (PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm) — Different layer of the stack. PSPs are the payer-side wallet apps that scan UPI QRs; SIB UPI QR is merchant-side acceptance issued by the SIB bank. Because UPI mandates interoperability, a PSP wallet will pay a SIB-issued @sib QR with the same UX as any other QR — meaning the choosing criterion for a Vietnamese-style wallet-vs-bank competition doesn't apply in India. PSPs cannot lock SIB merchants out; SIB cannot lock PhonePe users out [upi-ref, in-cro].

vs. the cross-border upi-qr integrations (Singapore PayNow, UAE Aani, France Lyra) — Architecturally distinct. The PayNow-UPI link works by bridging settlement between two national instant-payment systems behind the scenes; the user-facing QR remains the local one. SIB Mirror+ exposing Singapore-PayNow-inward UPI in v8.2.17 (16 July 2025) is therefore the first SIB-deployed international receive surface, while the SIB-issued @sib merchant QR continues to be a strictly domestic acceptance instrument [8].

Fun facts

A 96-year-old Kerala bank turned a domestic QR rail into a Singapore-corridor remittance product. South Indian Bank — Kerala's first private-sector scheduled bank, licensed in 1957 [6] — pushed an update to SIB Mirror+ on 16 July 2025 that lets a @sib UPI ID receive money "instantly from Singapore" via the NPCI–MAS PayNow corridor [8]. A QR designed for domestic merchant payments in 2016 now functions as a cross-border remittance address for one of India's largest NRI banking franchises — a quiet repurposing of UPI's wire format that no change to the QR itself was needed for.

One mid-size bank, two competing national QR rails. SIB ships SIB UPI-POS (upi://pay deep link) and a separate SIB Bharat QR app (EMVCo TLV, Worldline-built) — carrying both of India's competing merchant-QR formats simultaneously under one roof [2, in-cro]. The asymmetry is striking: at the national level UPI QR deployments (~658 M) outnumber Bharat QR (~67 M) roughly 10:1, yet SIB maintains a full merchant-acquirer stack on both IN.

The "SIB UPI QR Scan & Pay" / "SIB UPI-POS" branding is itself a clean illustration of a recurring pattern in India's payments market: dozens of banks market their own QR product name on top of one shared NPCI format. The customer-facing brand multiplies while the wire format stays singular — the opposite of the country-branded national standards (vietqr, promptpay-qr, duitnow-qr) where one brand maps to one format IN.

Status

Active, as a deployment of an active national standard. South Indian Bank is a participating UPI bank running @sib, and the SIB UPI-POS and SIB Mirror+ apps are live on the app stores [2, 4].

UPI QR is India's dominant merchant-payment surface, and as of 2025 it is also the world's largest retail fast-payment system by volume:

IMF report "Growing Retail Digital Payments (The Value of Interoperability)" (June 2025) explicitly named UPI the world's largest retail fast-payment system [14].
Per ACI Worldwide's Prime Time for Real-Time 2024 data, UPI recorded 129.3 billion transactions in 2024 — 49 % of global real-time digital transaction volume (Brazil 14 %, Thailand 8 %, China 6 %) [14].
By end-FY 2024-25 NPCI counted 568.6 million UPI QRs deployed across 65 million Indian merchants; PIDF (Payment Infrastructure Development Fund) had added 54.5 million digital touchpoints in tier-3-to-6 centres by 31 October 2025 [14].
Earlier domestic figures cited in this report (658 M UPI QRs, 83 % of Indian retail digital payments) remain consistent with the broader national trajectory [upi-ref, in-cro].

SIB's individual UPI volume is not separately quantified in the public sources used for this entry and is deliberately omitted rather than estimated.

No deprecation: the underlying UPI rail is core national infrastructure with no successor planned [upi-ref]. SIB's deployment will track NPCI's UPI roadmap (UPI 3.0 features, RuPay-credit-on-UPI, cross-border links — including the NPCI ↔ Singapore PayNow corridor SIB Mirror+ has already wired into the consumer app) as those features reach member banks [2, 8].

Sources

Deployments

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

IN — IN-india.md

Deployments

No country reports mention this standard by name.