Bank of Hangzhou Becomes First Chinese Bank to Achieve QR Code Integration with NetsUnion

Efforts to integrate China’s QR code payments systems continues, with regional lender Bank of Hangzhou announcing that it has achieved compatibility with leading online payments players.

On 15 January Bank of Hangzhou announced that it had worked with NetsUnion Clearing Corporation, All-in-pay Network Services Inc and Ping An Group’s Yiqianbao (壹钱包) to achieve QR code payments compatibility.

Vendors working with Bank of Hangzhou can now use smart devices to scan the NetsUnion QR codes of All-in-pay or Yiqianbao wallets for payments purposes.

The first transactions to make use of the compatible QR codes were completed on 15 January at a commercial premise in Hangzhou.

NetsUnion Clearing Corporation is a subsidiary of the Chinese central bank, responsible for operating Chi­na’s na­tion­wide cen­tralised plat­form for the pro­cess­ing of on­line trans­ac­tions un­der­taken by the coun­try’s third-party pay­ments providers in­volv­ing bank ac­counts.

All-in-pay is a third-party payments provider headquartered in Shanghai, while Yiqianbao is Ping An Group’s mobile financial services platform launched in early 2014.

Bank of Hangzhou is reportedly the first lender in China to achieve QR code compatibility with NetsUnion Clearing Corporation.

China’s finance and payments sector is currently making haste to achieve compatibility of their various QR code systems following a push from the Chinese central bank.

Big state-owned lenders Bank of China and Bank of Communications have already worked with China UnionPay and Tencent’s WeChat to achieve QR code compatibility in selected regions.

The “Fin­tech De­vel­op­ment Plan (2019 – 2021)” (金融科技（Fin­Tech）发展规划（2019-2021）年) re­leased by the Chi­nese cen­tral bank in Sep­tem­ber 2019 high­lighted the com­pat­i­bil­ity of QR code pay­ments as a key goal. 

The Plan called for “dri­ving QR code pay­ment com­pat­i­bil­ity, re­search­ing and for­mu­lat­ing com­pat­i­ble bar­code pay­ment tech­nol­ogy stan­dards, uni­fi­ca­tion of bar­code pay­ment cod­ing reg­u­la­tions, es­tab­lish­ment of a bar­code pay­ment tech­nol­ogy sys­tem, over­com­ing the bar­ri­ers be­tween bar­code pay­ment ser­vices, and achieve mu­tual recog­ni­tion and scan­ning of the codes of dif­fer­ent apps and ven­dors.” 

Related stories

Bank of China Achieves QR Code Com­pat­i­bil­ity with WeChat Pay

Bank of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions First to In­te­grate QR Codes with Ten­cen­t’s WeChat

China Union­Pay and Ten­cent Work on In­te­gra­tion of QR Codes Fol­low­ing Cen­tral Bank Push