Yandex.Checkout Is Launching Payments via QR-Codes for Merchants

Yandex.Checkout is launching a new feature for merchants: the ability to accept payments through QR-codes. Sellers will simply need to place QR-codes on their merchandise, and customers will be able to scan the code through the Yandex.Money mobile application.

QR-codes can be placed either on material goods (pizza boxes, books, bills, etc.), documents (courier’s application for delivery registrations, on a web site page for payment confirmation, etc.) or on digital products (online movie streaming services, music, etc.) 

To make a payment, users simply open the Yandex.Money app on their phones and point at a QR-code with their smartphone’s camera. Once the code is scanned, the app will show the product’s name, seller, and price. After that, a user chooses a payment method — either Yandex.Money e-wallet or a bank card linked to it.

“QR-codes are an extremely convenient tool for making payments that sellers can place on material or online platforms: whether on a door at a national park allowing customers to make a charitable donation, or on buses that will help passengers pay for a ride,” says Maria Gracheva, CEO of Yandex.Money. “We are sure that QR-codes have great potential to become extremely popular for payments.”

All merchants using the payment aggregator Yandex.Checkout can get access to a QR-codes generator to set codes on their products. Currently, more than 76,000 online stores use Yandex.Checkout, and 4 million users have the Yandex.Money app that has iOS, Android, and Windows Phone versions.

According to a joint study by Yandex.Market and GfK, more than 30% of online consumers regularly make purchases via mobile platforms (smartphones or tablets). Yandex.Checkout reported that in 2015 the number of mobile payments increased by 30%. The number of online stores at which customers pay via mobile platforms grew by 60%. Last year, the share of mobile payments in Yandex.Money’s total processing volume was 20%.