Serbian citizens will soon be among the first in Europe to pay for goods by scanning QR codes from products.
Continued expansion of the instant payment network will make it possible for each store to be able to make payments by phone and QR code, which is especially important for merchants who will immediately receive cash for merchandise sold instead of waiting for several days, this is otherwise the case when payment is made by cards, the National Bank of Serbia said.
The expansion of new e-payment services is reducing the amount of cash in circulation, a practice in many developed countries of the world. Sweden is considered a leader in this matter, which has outlined a plan to become a cashless society by 2023.
– Any business improvement and more modern payment method is good news. The only problem is the literacy of the population, which is low in our country, our children do not even learn anything about it at school, many places have no contact with new technologies. The NBS should make sure that it is systematically regulated. Citizens who are already cognizant of new technologies will take this payment method immediately, because it is faster and cost control is easy, those who do not cope with it normally will hesitate in the beginning – said Milan Kovacevic, economic analyst.
When it comes to the security of this type of payment, rules are set out exactly what the QR code should contain and the whole system relies on experience, practice, domestic and international laws. It is in the interest of every state to have as little cash as possible, because the use of cash, in addition to the risk of being stolen, requires costly storage, transportation and storage procedures. The National Strategy of the Republic of Serbia for Small Payments 2019-2024, among other things, anticipates twice the growth of electronic and mobile banking in the country.
– In China, you can do everything over the phone for a long time. When you rent a car, for example, you do it through the app, you just arrive at the agreed location and the car is waiting for you. On the other hand, less money in circulation with NBS makes great savings for us. However, we still need to arrange some other things, speed up all payments and the NBS should use foreign exchange more rationally. With us, transferring money from one bank account to another is expensive, which is why citizens raise money, put it in a bag and carry it to another bank. It would also be good to facilitate traffic between neighbors with whom we have a very large trade and who have other currencies – Kovacevic continued.
In Serbia, at least 15 million bills are issued every month for electricity, telephone, Infostan and other services that citizens pay. Paying by phone, or scanning the QR code, is just one way to avoid long queues before counters. The number of card payments on the internet last year was nine million in Serbia, which is a million more than in 2018. The highest payments were made on home sites and online stores, around 4.7 million.
For cashless payments, in just one year, from mid-2018 to half of last year, the number of POS terminals increased by 13 percent, or about 10,000. The governments of many countries in Western Europe are enacting laws that almost completely exclude cash from circulation.
China, as one of the largest and fastest growing economies, has created a long-standing plan to get rid of paper money and switch completely to electronic payment. This trend has not bypassed even the most vulnerable sections of society, and for five years now beggars on the streets of China have been able to raise money through electronic payment and reading of smart phone codes. Anyone who wants to give some money to beggars in China can now do so via their smartphone, scanning the QR code found in the beggars and thus helping them, Alo reports.
