The National Bank of Cambodia (NBC)'s Director General Kimty Kormoly (R, front) and UnionPay International Vice President Larry Wang (L, front) sign a Memorandum of Understanding in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on July 10, 2023. The NBC, Cambodia's central bank, and UnionPay International signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) Monday on cross-border QR code payment cooperation. (Photo by Phearum/Xinhua)
PHNOM PENH, July 10 (Xinhua) -- The National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) and UnionPay International signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) Monday on cross-border QR code payment cooperation.
The deal was inked in Phnom Penh between the Cambodian central bank's Director General Kimty Kormoly and UnionPay International Vice President Larry Wang, under the presence of NBC Deputy Governor Chea Serey.
Serey said under the MoU, some 10 million KHQR users in Cambodia will be able to directly scan UnionPay QR Code in China this year.
KHQR is a universal quick response (QR) code system created for retail payments in Cambodia. It only requires a single QR for receiving payment from any mobile app including the Bakong app.
"The MoU will allow KHQR users to go to China's mainland and scan on the QR code of UnionPay," Serey told Xinhua after the signing ceremony.
She said the cooperation would facilitate Cambodian tourists in making payment in China, and help Chinese tourists make payment on QR codes in Cambodia as well.
The bank executive said around 1.8 million vendors currently accept KHQR transactions in Cambodia, so Chinese tourists with a UnionPay-enabled e-wallet will be able to pay at any KHQR merchants in the Southeast Asian nation.
Larry said the MoU would enable Cambodian residents to pay directly with their local e-wallets in the global UnionPay QR code network, including China.
"With acceptance by more than 90 percent of merchants in Cambodia, and hundreds of thousands of cards issued by major local banks, UnionPay has become a payment tool favored by the residents in the country," he told Xinhua.
Larry said the collaboration boosts UnionPay's linkage with national QR networks outside China, especially with the networks of Southeast Asian countries.
Currently, more than 200 million UnionPay cards have been issued in 78 countries and regions outside of China, all of which can be used at almost all merchant Point-of-Sale (POS) and Automated Teller Machine (ATM) terminals in China, he said. ■
