India has begun to introduce QR codes to its ecommerce market. The country's government has followed the lead of China and Japan, and requested that digital payment methods such as MasterCard and Visa use common QR technology to help merchants embrace the technology. The common technology, named India QR, is expected to be available at the start of 2017 and would mean that consumers would no longer have to transfer money between systems depending on the options offered by merchants. The code system has been available in China and Japan for around six years, but achieved high levels of use after companies like Alibaba and Tencent introduced it. Paytm, an Indian start-up, recently announced that 1 million merchants now use its QR codes to make payments, only one year after its launch.
