Nepal's QR payments more than double in three years, central bank data show

What happened

The Post compared NRB figures for the first month of fiscal year 2026/27, which began in mid-July 2026, with the last month of fiscal year 2023/24. Over that period, QR payments rose from 32.11 million to 72.44 million a month. Their value rose from Rs 61.73 billion to Rs 164.42 billion, an increase of about 166 percent. Mobile banking value grew by about 55 percent, to Rs 580.56 billion across 78.65 million transactions. Wallet value grew by about 27 percent, to Rs 48.59 billion across 53.01 million transactions.

Fintech Alliance Nepal, an industry group, gave user figures. Its president, Amit Agrawal, said digital wallets have 28.3 million users, up from 6.3 million in 2020, and mobile banking has more than 30 million users. He said payment activity usually peaks around Saptami, the seventh day of Dashain, then falls by up to half during the holidays. Fund transfers rise by about 10 percent on Tika day.

Company officials described the same pattern. Khalti's chief executive, Prabin Regmi, said digital transactions rise before festivals, dip during the holidays and peak again on Tika day. Nepal Clearing House's chief operating officer, Munni Rajbhandari, said digital festival gifts are not yet widespread but are growing, as family members abroad send money home.

The engineering behind it

A QR payment looks simple, but several systems work behind it. In general, the merchant's QR code holds an identifier for the merchant's account. The customer's banking app reads the code, asks the customer to confirm the amount, and sends a payment message. A switch routes that message to the merchant's bank, which credits the account and sends back a confirmation. All of this has to finish in a few seconds.

Interoperability is what lets many banks and apps use the same QR codes. The NRB's oversight report for 2024/25 says Nepal's National Payment Switch is being built by Nepal Clearing House. Its Retail Payment Switch, which handles non-card payments between members, has run since November 2021. According to the NRB, it processes transactions in real time, so the payer's and payee's accounts change at once, while final settlement between banks happens later through the central bank's real-time gross settlement system.

Volumes of this size are a load problem. Tens of millions of payments a month means peaks of many payments every second, especially on busy days such as Saptami. In general, payment systems handle this with databases that guarantee each transaction is recorded exactly once, servers spread across several machines, and monitoring that detects failures quickly. A payment that is debited but not credited is the error that such systems are designed to prevent.

Security is the other half of the work. The Post reported that banks warn customers about digital fraud, phishing and theft of one-time passwords (OTPs) during festivals, and run awareness campaigns on social media. The NRB report notes that the National Card Switch includes a central fraud and risk management system. In general, such systems look for unusual patterns, such as many payments from a new device, and stop them for checks.

What it means in Nepal

The NRB report for 2024/25 says QR code payments were the most widely used retail payment method in that year. The number of QR payments rose by 92.5 percent and their value by 91.8 percent compared with the year before. The total value of QR payments reached about Rs 958 billion in 2024/25, up from about Rs 95 billion in 2021/22. Around 2.9 million merchants in Nepal now accept QR payments, according to the report.

Cash has not disappeared. The Post quoted people who still give cash envelopes when they visit relatives, and others who use QR payments for nieces and nephews but still withdraw notes from ATMs. In April 2025 the Post reported that poor mobile connectivity outside Kathmandu Valley makes some merchants worry about failed payments, and that the NRB had called for more public awareness of online scams. The same report showed how the mix is shifting: between 2020/21 and 2023/24, the share of QR payments in all transactions rose from 1 to 12 percent, while ATM withdrawals fell from 16.38 to 9.70 percent.

Digital channels also carried relief money this year. After the Bhote Koshi flood of 26 August 2026, the Post reported that billions of rupees were collected for the Prime Minister Disaster Relief Fund through services such as Fonepay, Nepal Clearing House and eSewa. QR payments also cross borders now. The NRB report says Indian visitors can pay by QR at 1.7 million merchants in Nepal through one operator, and customers of banks in the Fonepay network can scan Indian UPI codes to pay merchants in India.