Russia’s Yandex.Checkout launches QR-code payments

Yandex.Checkout, created by Yandex.Money in 2013, which itself is the joint venture of search engine Yandex, has launched QR-Code payments that will allow customers to scan the code through the service’s mobile application.

The QR-code can be placed on any material goods merchants wish to sell including food packages, books, documents and even digital products such as online streaming services or music.

 

How to make a payment

In order to pay using the QR-Code, customers need to open the Yandex.Money app on their smartphones and point at a QR-code with the phone 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.

All merchants who use Yandex.Checkout can get access to a QR-code generator to mark codes for all their products.

Yandex.Checkout QR

Yandex.Money says that 76,000 online stores use Yandex.Checkout, and 4 million users have the Yandex.Money app that has iOS, Android, and Windows Phone versions.

The company also highlights how the market is ripe for mobile payments to prosper, citing its earlier research in partnership with GfK, which found that more than 30% of online consumers regularly make purchases via mobile platforms (smartphones or tablets). 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%.

“We are sure that QR-codes have great potential to become extremely popular for payments,” Gracheva added.

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