MobiKwik: QR Code Use Up 400 Percent Year-to-Year

One sector of the mobile payments market that seems to be cropping up a lot more often is quick response (QR) code operations. These strange little mosaics of black and white squares are drawing in a lot more user count in the anecdotal sense, and a new report from MobiKwik says the boosted numbers aren’t just anecdotally rising.

MobiKwik—one of India’s leaders in mobile wallet operations—recently staged a study and discovered that QR code transactions are up fully 400 percent over the levels seen last year. That’s just for starters; there’s every sign that growth could continue through this year and beyond.

The biggest driver of this explosive growth is convenience, according to MobiKwik, which is itself fueled by sheer ease of use. Ease for both the customer paying bills with it and for merchants setting up operations using it. The Indian government’s push to demonetize large portions of its currency at the end of last year certainly didn’t hurt matters, but that mostly just opened up the path for mobile payments in general.

With both major operations—MobiKwik cites Mother Dairy, Amul and Haldirams among them—and smaller mom-and-pop operations taking advantage of QR codes, and more merchants joining the party regularly, it’s a safe bet that QR code use won’t be in decline any time soon. That’s also prompting more companies to get involved with bringing out QR code-related technologies to make these systems more accessible or more effective.

It’s sort of a virtuous cycle at work here; the more businesses that bring out this technology, the more users get involved. The more users get involved, the more businesses want to add it to the roster lest market share fall at risk. As more users get involved and more businesses want it, technology makers start taking the ball and running with it, adding more capability and trying to improve ease-of-use so they too can get in on the latest equivalent of a gold rush.

More options for customers, more options for businesses, and more programmers looking to get in on the action means a lot more QR code action to go around for everybody. In the end, that likely means we’ll see even more gains in QR codes to follow.