By 2025, Japan Hopes to have SEA Countries Integrated with QR Payments

According to reports, the Japanese government is in talks with nations in Southeast Asia about exchanging QR code payment systems. Potential connections will enable visitors from Southeast Asia to utilize their native payment apps for transactions in Japan, and vice versa.

If the idea moves forward, it is anticipated that implementation will begin in 2025. Participants in the negotiations include representatives from the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry in Japan as well as central bankers from countries in Southeast Asia, such as Indonesia and Cambodia.

By this year, a new system that connects the nation’s JPQR QR code payment system to international payment providers would have been built by the Payments Japan Association.

This will be an extension of the 2022 agreement among the five ASEAN member states (Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia) to establish unified QR code payment systems. Subsequently, Indonesia integrated the system with Malaysia and Singapore, with Thailand being the first nation to do so formally.

The central bank of the nation, Bank Indonesia, inked a comparable deal with Japan in late 2022. As part of the agreement, cross-border payments were integrated using the JPQR and the QR Code Indonesian Standard (QRIS).