EMVCo, the global technical body that manages the EMV® Specifications, has publicly released two QR Code payment specifications that support merchant-presented QR Code and consumer-presented QR Code use cases. The technical documents define QR Code payments in a manner that simplifies the development and potentially broadens the acceptance of QR Code payment solutions globally.

QR Codes are two-dimensional machine-readable barcodes, which are increasingly used to facilitate mobile payments at the point-of-sale. The EMV QR Code Specification for Payment Systems supports two differing QR Code payment use cases:

• Consumer-presented – the customer displays the QR Code on their mobile device and the merchant uses an optical scanner to read the code.
• Merchant-presented – the merchant displays the QR Code and the customer uses their mobile device to scan the code.

The clarity provided by the specifications will enable merchants to accept QR Code payment solutions from various providers in a standardised manner. Consumers will also benefit from a more uniform experience that offers greater convenience and familiarity.

The EMV QR Code Specification for Payment Systems can coexist with existing proprietary QR Code solutions. All EMV Specifications are available on a royalty-free basis to all interested parties from the EMVCo website.

Cheryl Mish, EMVCo Board of Managers Chair, comments: “With the increasing deployment of QR Code payment methods, it is important that the payments ecosystem provides a consistent experience for merchants and consumers. Given the early stage of deployment of this emerging payment technology and growing adoption, now is the time to ensure the technology’s potential is not constrained in the future due to interoperability issues with the established payment infrastructure.”

EMVCo is also developing a self-testing framework for the merchant-presented and consumer-presented specifications which allows point of interaction (POI) implementers to evaluate whether their QR Codes are generated or interpreted in compliance to the EMV QR Code Specifications. This is expected to be available in early 2018.