The main banking chambers celebrated yesterday the entry into force -as of next Friday, September 1- of the interoperability of QR codes for purchases with credit cards, a measure adopted by the Central Bank (BCRA) that will allow any business that display a QR code can be charged with credit, regardless of the digital wallet or banking application from which the payment is made.
The rule, which was adopted by the BCRA last May, aims to expand the uses of the recognition system, so that not only payments with money in account gain ground, but also those made with credit cards.
“Next September 1 will not be another Friday for the Argentine means of payment system. It will be the beginning of a long-awaited stage that will allow customers to make credit card payments from any interoperable digital wallet, regardless of the brand of the QR Code displayed by a business,” the Association of Argentine Banks (Adeba) said in a joint statement. , the Association of Banks of Argentina (ABA), the Association of Public and Private Banks (Abapra) and the Association of Specialized Banks (ABE).
Until now, only payments with transfers were interoperable through QR, which, the banks pointed out, “required having to change the digital wallet in cases in which it was preferred to pay in installments with credit cards, a situation that had to confusion between the parties and undesirable delays for families and businesses”. According to data from the BCRA as of June, 10.7 million operations started with interoperable QR were already registered, at 34% of the total payment operations with transfers, which implies a growth of 212% year-on-year.
“The full interoperability of interoperable QRs is a step towards competition and democratization of payment methods in Argentina,” the entities concluded.
Thus, a claim for the full interoperability of QR codes, which had escalated months ago, will be settled.
At the beginning of April, Adeba issued a statement in which he demanded that the BCRA update the regulations and pointed out against Mercado Pago that “taking advantage of a lack of regulation, it imposes conditions on credit and debit card holders.”
“To operate with the QR code of a business, they must first become customers of its wallet,” denounced the banks, while the fintech responded in harsh terms.
Source: Ambito
