Kathmandu, Citizens Bank International and NCHL entered into an agreement to enable cross border QR payment in Nepal for Alipay+. The agreement was signed by Mr. Ganesh Raj Pokhrel, Chief Executive Officer of Citizens Bank International and Mr. Neelesh Man Singh Pradhan, Chief Executive Officer of NCHL.
With this NEPALPAY and interoperable QR can be scanned by the users of the members of Alipay+ network. The tourists travelling to Nepal from various countries including China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Mongolia, Thailand, South Korea, Sweden and Italy can use its domestic mobile payment or wallet to scan NEPALPAY QR including interoperable QR available across the country.
Alipay+ is a network aggregator with over 30 issuing instruments aggregated, more than 300 acquiring networks and service providers, and has access to 90 million global merchants across 66 markets worldwide. Alipay+ network supports the payment from an array of e-wallets including Alipay China, OCBC, Changipay, Gcash, AlipayHK, Hipay, KakaoPay, TossPay, NaverPay, TnGD, PBB, TrueMoney, Mpay, Tinaba to provide a seamless cross border payment experience.
NCHL has made the necessary network to network arrangement with Alipay+ as its international payment partner to enable cross border QR payments, subsequent to which Citizens Bank International has entered into the agreement with NCHL.NEPALPAY QR is the implementing infrastructure of NepalQR standard as part of the National Payment Switch (NPS) that operates as QR scheme and also facilitates interoperability of QR at issuing, merchant and network level. It currently has over 850,000 QR merchants within its network including interoperable QRs.
Catering to over 1.8 million customers, Citizens Bank International is among one of the leading commercial banks in Nepal. The bank has now total of 197 branches, 3 extension counters, 74 branchless banking and 162 ATM’s. Citizens Bank International has enrolled more than 13,000 merchants in NEPALPAY QR.
