On August 30, NACHA – The Electronic Payments Association, proposed guidelines to facilitate the use of Quick Response (QR) codes for consumer bill payments. A QR code is a type of barcode readable by a mobile device equipped with a QR application. The guidelines, developed by NACHA’s Council for Electronic Billing and Payment, seek to establish a single QR code format to serve consumer bill pay needs through a variety of channels, including a biller’s website, a financial institution’s online bill pay website site, or other aggregation bill pay websites. The proposal recommends guidelines for the QR code size and format, billing data to be included, and encoding format. NACHA has requested comment from interested parties by September 19, 2012 and expects to prepare a final version of the guidelines before the end of 2012.
