New Delhi, Aug 21 (IANS): Pioneered by India, QR Code payments to grow more than 590 per cent in the leading Southeast Asian market by 2028, a new report said on Monday.

According to Juniper Research, the volume of QR code payments in the Southeast Asian market will increase from 13 billion in 2023 to 90 billion in 2028.

"High growth in Southeast Asia and other developing markets is largely down to the financial inclusivity that QR payments offer; enabling unbanked users to access digital payments. Conversely, Western markets have seen very limited adoption; highlighting the global divide in QR payment markets," the report said.

According to data from MyGovIndia, India has topped the list of five countries in digital payments with 89.5 million digital transactions in 2022.

Second, on the list is Brazil which amounted to 29.2 million transactions followed by China with 17.6 million transactions.

Moreover, the report found that the national QR payment schemes, including India’s UPI (Unified payments interface) and Brazil’s Pix, played a key role in encouraging market adoption, with their success driving the implementation of national schemes in 2023 in Kenya and Bangladesh.

However, it found significant growth to market volume will come from cross-border interoperability within Southeast Asian markets.

Meanwhile, UPI transactions rose manifolds between 2018 and 2022 in terms of value as well as volume, by 1,320 per cent and 1,876 per cent, respectively, in India.

In 2018, UPI transactions in terms of volume stood at 374.63 crore, which went up by 1,876 per cent to 7,403.97 crore in 2022.

In terms of value, the UPI transactions were Rs 5.86 lakh crore in 2018, which went up by 1,320 per cent to Rs 83.2 lakh crore in 2022.