From September 2026, banks will be required to support a universal QR code for payment of goods and services. This was announced by the head of the Bank of Russia, Elvira Nabiullina, at the annual meeting of credit institutions with the management of the Central Bank. The Central Bank plans to publish the rules for the universal QR code as early as March.
Currently, the QR payment market in Russia is fragmented: each major player — Sber, T-Bank, the Central Bank's Fast Payment System, and others — has its own QR code. The seller is forced to place several codes at the checkout or choose one partner, effectively limiting customers in their choice of payment method. The buyer, in turn, may encounter a situation where their banking application does not support the code of a particular point of sale.
The universal QR code eliminates this problem: one code in any store will work with any bank's application. According to Nabiullina, this will give people a "non-intrusive real choice" and exclude the dominance of the largest players — primarily Sber, whose ecosystem currently occupies a significant share of the QR payment market.
For banks, the innovation means mandatory technical integration with the standard by September. For small businesses, it means simplification: instead of contracts with several payment systems, one code at the checkout will be sufficient.