Malaysia Gives Banks and E-Wallets Two Years to Retire Their Own QR Codes.

Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) will phase out proprietary QR payment networks by 30 June 2028. The requirement sits within the central bank’s newly issued Interoperable Fund Transfer Framework (IFTF), published on 30 June 2026.

Providers are also barred from onboarding new merchants onto closed schemes during the two-year transition.

The policy is designed to let consumers pay any merchant through any participating bank or e-wallet application, regardless of which institution serves that merchant. Rather than operating separate closed systems, all participating providers will connect through Malaysia’s shared national payment infrastructure.

What counts as a proprietary QR network?

A proprietary QR network is a closed system run by a single bank or e-wallet provider, where merchants and customers must typically use the same provider’s service for a payment to go through.

Some merchants still display QR codes that accept only one specific application, even as interoperable DuitNow QR codes have become common. DuitNow QR lets a merchant show a single code that accepts payments from participating banks and e-wallets, removing the need to maintain multiple codes from different providers.

All QR payments move to PayNet’s shared rails

Under the framework, banks offering QR payment services must join the shared infrastructure and allow customers to pay merchants served by any participating acquirer. Merchant acquirers must likewise ensure their merchants can accept payments from customers of every participating financial institution.

That shared infrastructure is the Real-time Retail Payments Platform (RPP) operated by Payments Network Malaysia (PayNet), which powers DuitNow Transfer and DuitNow QR. PayNet is 35.5% owned by BNM, with the remaining shares held by 11 Malaysian financial institutions, including Maybank.

 Electronic payments continue to grow strongly, driven largely by mobile banking. PayNet processed 8.44 billion digital payment transactions in 2025, up 30.69% at banks and 71.7% at non-banks, and added 681,250 DuitNow QR acceptance points over the year.

Industry concerns over cost and differentiation

 Most respondents to BNM’s public consultation supported prohibiting proprietary QR schemes, agreeing that a common network would benefit consumers and merchants.

 Some industry players warned, however, that migrating fully to the national network could carry substantial implementation costs or limit their ability to run customised loyalty programmes, rewards and marketing campaigns.

 BNM said PayNet has confirmed providers will retain flexibility to build loyalty programmes and other value-added services within the shared infrastructure.

 The two-year runway to 2028 is intended to give affected institutions time to adapt their systems and business models. The IFTF replaces the Interoperable Credit Transfer Framework issued in December 2019.

Cross-border QR payments will follow the Nexus timeline

The IFTF framework’s reach will soon extend beyond domestic payments. Its cross-border requirements, covering account-to-account transfers and QR purchase transactions made through the interoperable scheme, currently do not have an effective date. 

Instead, BNM states these obligations will be guided by the live operationalisation date of the Nexus scheme, to be announced by the central bank in future, with BNM reserving the right to set a different timeline subject to reasonable notice to participants.

For context, Project Nexus is a multilateral scheme designed to connect domestic instant payment systems across countries through a single standardised connection, rather than the bilateral, one-off linkages that currently join DuitNow to schemes in Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Cambodia. 

Conceived by the Bank for International Settlements in 2021, the project was handed to Nexus Global Payments (NGP), a Singapore-incorporated not-for-profit established in 2025 by the central banks of India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Bank Indonesia joined as the sixth member in 2026. 

Malaysia’s stake in the scheme deepened in February 2026, when NGP appointed a joint venture between PayNet and Singapore’s NETS as the Nexus Technical Operator.

This means the same operator running Malaysia’s domestic shared rails will build and run the international network that those rails eventually connect to. Technical development is scheduled to begin in early 2026, with go-live targeted for 2027.

“Nexus is shaping a future where cross-border payments are instant, accessible, and seamlessly connected,” said Andrew McCormack, Chief Executive Officer of Nexus Global Payments.