Bangladesh Bank's Bangla QR guidelines establish common roles and presentation for interoperable retail QR payments. They distinguish static and transaction-specific codes, address issuers, acquirers, processors and merchants, and prescribe transaction notifications and security.
TL;DR:
- Bangla QR supplies Bangladesh's common merchant QR payment framework.
- The original guidelines define roles, presentation and payment handling.
- Later Bangladesh Bank measures extend interoperability and merchant rollout.
Summary
Original Guidelines
Bangladesh Bank issued the Bangla QR code-based payment guidelines with PSD Circular 01/2021 on 6 January 2021. They establish a common national retail QR arrangement and address issuing, acquiring and related participant roles. The original guideline is a specific publication rather than a blanket version number for all subsequent payment policy.
Merchant Payment Journey
The central bank's later reporting describes bank and mobile-financial-service users logging into their applications, scanning a merchant's Bangla QR, entering an amount and confirming payment. A common code supports interoperability across participating applications, while the customer's provider continues to authenticate the payer and supply the account relationship.
Current Development
Bangladesh Bank's 2025 financial-stability report describes full interoperability from November 2025 and later measures concerning exclusive Bangla QR use and merchant presence from July 2026. It also discusses small-merchant settlement developments. Those later measures are distinct from the original January 2021 text and should not be silently attributed to its first edition.
Technical And Operating Boundary
The framework concerns interoperable merchant QR initiation, with implementation and operational duties following the relevant national guideline and later circulars. A generic EMV QR reference does not establish that every deployed provider has identical functions or independent certification. Merchant onboarding, acceptance and payment confirmation remain necessary for the actual transaction.
Keywords
- National QR
- Merchant Payments
- Interoperability
- Issuer Roles
- Acquirer Roles
- NPSB
- Payment Confirmation
- Merchant Onboarding
- Bangla QR
- Bangladesh