Buying iced tea from a street vendor, paying for parking, or splitting a bill at a café: in Indonesia, more and more of these payments happen with a quick scan of a QR code. QRIS, the Quick Response Code Indonesian Standard, has turned millions of phones into wallets and millions of small shops into digital merchants.

In 2026, QRIS is growing faster than ever, with transactions more than doubling compared to last year. It’s one of Indonesia’s biggest digital success stories, and it runs on a lot of clever engineering behind the scenes. Here’s what the numbers say, how a QR payment actually works, and why this matters for future computer engineers.

What’s Happening

According to Bank Indonesia (BI), QRIS processed 12.55 billion transactions in the first half of 2026, worth about Rp600.69 trillion. That’s already well past half of BI’s 2026 target of 17 billion transactions, and transaction volume grew 100.12% compared with the same period a year earlier. QRIS was also accepted by 44.86 million merchants by mid-2026.

The number of users keeps climbing too. On September 24, 2026, BI’s Destry Damayanti said QRIS now has 67 million users. “That means perhaps a quarter of Indonesia’s population is already using QRIS,” she said. BI is targeting 69.32 million users by the end of the year.

QRIS is also going international. Indonesian travelers can already pay with QRIS in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Japan. In January 2026, BI said connections with China and South Korea were in an advanced stage, targeted for early 2026, with India and other countries in discussion. Further expansion to the Middle East and possibly Europe is being considered for later years.

The Tech Behind It: What Happens When You Scan

A QR code is just a pattern of black and white squares that stores data, such as the merchant’s ID and sometimes the payment amount. What makes QRIS special is that it’s a single national standard. Before QRIS, each e-wallet or bank had its own QR code, so shops needed a stack of different stickers. With QRIS, one code works with any participating bank or e-wallet app.

Behind that quick scan, several systems work together in a few seconds:

  1. Your phone’s camera reads the QR code, and the app decodes the merchant information.
  2. The app sends a payment request over the internet to your bank or e-wallet provider.
  3. Your provider checks your identity and balance, then sends the transaction through a national switching network to the merchant’s provider.
  4. The merchant’s provider confirms the payment, and both sides get a notification almost instantly.

To handle billions of transactions safely, these systems need fast and reliable servers, secure communication using encryption, fraud detection, and the ability to keep working even when traffic spikes, like during big shopping days.

What It Means for Future Engineers

QRIS shows how a well-designed technology standard can change an entire country’s economy. It helps small businesses accept digital payments without expensive card machines, and it brings millions of people into the digital financial system.

Building and running systems like this takes many skills. Engineers design the mobile apps and the servers that process payments, build networks that stay online 24/7, protect data with encryption and security systems, and develop the payment terminals and smart devices that merchants use. As QRIS connects with other countries, systems also need to work across different currencies and networks.

For computer engineering students, digital payments are a great example of how hardware, software, networking, and security all come together in a system people use every day. And with QRIS still growing quickly, the demand for engineers who can make these systems faster, safer, and more reliable will only increase.

Key Takeaways

QRIS processed 12.55 billion transactions worth about Rp600 trillion in the first half of 2026, doubling from a year earlier, and now has 67 million users and nearly 45 million merchants. It already works in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Japan, with more countries on the way. Every scan relies on apps, servers, secure networks, and encryption working together in seconds.

Interested in building the technology behind everyday digital life? The Computer Engineering program at BINUS University teaches you how hardware, software, networks, and security fit together. Explore the program and help power Indonesia’s digital economy.

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