Get paid using QR Codes

1st October 2021
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By Ordo

QR Codes were once the domain of quirky-can’t-really-see-the-genuinely-needed-gap-in-the-market gimmick. They were invented by Toyota in Japan in the 1990s to improve the process of car manufacturing.

A QR code can store three times the amount of data as a bar code using the same amount of space, and they’re secure, so now, they’ve taken a very different turn with the dawn of another new secure technology: Open Banking, making instant low cost account to account payments a reality.

These two very different technologies are coming together to revolutionise the way we pay on-line, in store and face to face. New open banking enabled QR code payment solutions, like Ordo’s, offer low cost, easy to use and secure ways for businesses to collect payment from their customers breaking the long-held monopoly of the global card schemes.

New FCA regulated open banking payments initiation businesses like Ordo, have created innovative request for payment services that provide businesses with individualised secure digital payments tokens that can be passed to your customers when you need to take payment. These tokens can sit behind a ‘Buy’ or ‘Pay Now’ button on your web site for e-commerce, or be embedded in an email, text message, data message and shared across all messaging platforms like WhatsApp and others, for requests to pay an invoice or bill. The customer is immediately notified of your request by email or message, they click the tokenised link and they are taken to the Ordo platform displaying the your specific payment request, which the customer is guided through paying via their own bank for instant payment, and then back to your web site if online.
Smartphone readable QR codes now offer a third delivery option for the payment token by embedding it within a QR code. The customer just reads the QR code with their phone, and then simply needs to confirm payment in their mobile or internet banking app which will have been opened and configured for the payment by Ordo. All friction removed.

It’s hard to imagine a simpler or safer use case, and far more widely useful than car manufacturer processing lines! All you as a business has to do is enter the amount to be paid, show the automatically generated QR code to your customer, and in seconds see in your own system or your Point of Sale device (which only needs to be a phone, tablet or PC, no specific reader necessary) that payment has been made and is in your bank account in cleared funds.

For the customer, it also couldn’t be simpler, they just scan the code with their phone camera, select their bank from Ordo’s list of 40 UK banks, and then authorise the payment that has been automatically set up in their banking app in the normal way, e.g. using their fingerprint.

That’s it done, there is no entry of amounts, references or card details or receiving account numbers, that’s all done securely between Ordo and their bank.

For businesses, open banking QR code payment services like Ordo means expensive cards are no longer the only option for eCommerce, Point of Sale and Face to Face payments.