QRIS Is Now Free Under Rp100,000. Someone Still Pays for It

Key takeaways

• From 1 October 2026, Bank Indonesia set the merchant discount rate (MDR) on QRIS to 0% for every transaction up to Rp100,000, for merchants of all sizes. Small, medium and large businesses previously paid 0.7% on those payments.
• The average QRIS payment in 2025 was about Rp91,600, below the new threshold for the first time since 2022. The waiver lands exactly where most everyday payments now sit.
• Bank Indonesia keeps none of the MDR. The fee is shared by issuers, acquirers, switching companies and the industry association, so the waiver is a revenue cut for the payment industry, not a subsidy. No compensation scheme has been announced.
• India took the same decision for UPI in 2020 and has since paid banks roughly ₹1,350–1,500 crore a year to keep low-value merchant payments viable. Indonesia is running the experiment without that budget line.

A fee that most shoppers never saw just disappeared

When a customer scans a QRIS code at a coffee shop, the full price leaves their e-wallet, but the shop has never received the full price. A small slice, the merchant discount rate, is deducted on the way and shared among the companies that move the money. For most businesses that slice has been 0.7% since QRIS became mandatory on 1 January 2020.

On 1 October 2026 that changed. Bank Indonesia, which announced the policy on 17 August, now sets the MDR at 0% for any QRIS transaction of Rp100,000 or less, regardless of the merchant's size. Micro businesses keep the more generous rule they already had: no fee on transactions up to Rp500,000. Above the thresholds, the old rates still apply.

Acting Governor Destry Damayanti described the goal as giving businesses room for cost efficiency while spreading the benefits of digital payments. The more interesting question is arithmetic. A fee that funded part of the payment system's operating costs has been removed for the bulk of its transactions, and someone has to absorb that.

15 billion QRIS transactions from January to July 2026, according to Bank Indonesia

69.3 million users and nearly 46 million merchants as of late September 2026

0.7% → 0% the fee for small, medium and large merchants on payments up to Rp100,000

What QRIS is, and why it scaled so fast

QRIS, the Quick Response Code Indonesian Standard, is a single national QR format introduced by Bank Indonesia and the Indonesian Payment System Association (ASPI). Before 2020, every wallet and bank used its own code, so a warung needed a stand of stickers for GoPay, OVO, Dana, ShopeePay and several banks. QRIS replaced them with one code that any participating app can pay. The merchant chooses one acquirer; the customer uses whichever app they already have.

That interoperability turned a fragmented market into a network, and network effects did the rest. Annual transaction volume grew from 124 million in 2020 to 15.5 billion in 2025, a 125-fold increase in five years. The first half of 2026 alone produced 12.55 billion transactions, double the same period a year earlier.

The third view in the chart matters most for this story. Dividing annual value by annual volume gives the average QRIS payment. It climbed from about Rp66,000 in 2020 to roughly Rp106,000 in 2023 and 2024, as larger merchants adopted the code. In 2025 it fell back to about Rp91,600. That is the signature of QRIS moving into daily life: more coffee, parking, groceries and street food, and fewer big-ticket purchases relative to the total.

An average is pulled up by large payments, so the typical transaction is likely smaller still. The practical implication is that the Rp100,000 threshold was not chosen at the edge of QRIS usage. It sits in the middle of it.

Six years of MDR policy, one direction

The October change is the latest step in a long walk toward zero. The rate for micro merchants has moved four times; the rate for everyone else stayed at 0.7% until now.

There is a small irony in the timeline. When Bank Indonesia brought back a 0.3% fee for micro merchants in July 2023, Assistant Governor Dicky Kartikoyono justified it as necessary to "maintain the sustainability of the ecosystem by industry": the fee paid for infrastructure, applications, staff, merchant acquisition and innovation. Three years later, the same institution has extended a full waiver to the largest merchants in the country for their most frequent transactions. Either the ecosystem has become sustainable on other income, or the cost has been moved somewhere less visible.

Who actually pays when the fee goes to zero

Bank Indonesia is explicit that it keeps none of the MDR. The fee is divided among the issuer (the customer's bank or e-wallet), the acquirer (the provider that signed up the merchant), the switching company that routes the transaction, ASPI, and the settlement layer. Setting it to zero does not move a cost onto the state budget. It removes revenue from these companies.

The industry's public response has been measured. When the micro-merchant threshold was raised to Rp500,000 in 2024, BTN said the change would "certainly impact bank revenue from MDR" but supported it for merchant growth. BNI said MDR from QRIS was a very small part of its transaction-fee income. In August 2026, LinkAja chief executive Yogi Rizkian Bahar acknowledged that the new rule reduces direct transaction revenue, and argued that providers can compensate through top-up fees, payment gateway services, transfers and business financial products.

That argument contains the real shift. For larger banks, MDR is a rounding error next to lending and deposits, and a free QRIS acceptance service is a cheap way to win merchant accounts. For smaller payment companies whose business is mostly acquiring, the same rule removes a core revenue line. Zero-fee acceptance tends to favour players that can cross-subsidise, which is a quiet push toward consolidation.

A payment is never free. When the merchant stops paying, the cost moves to the bank's balance sheet, the wallet's top-up fee, or the providers that cannot afford to stay in the market.

What the waiver is worth to a merchant

For a micro business, nothing changes: transactions up to Rp500,000 were already free. The gain is concentrated among small, medium and large merchants with many low-value payments, such as coffee chains, minimarkets, restaurants, pharmacies and parking operators. The calculator below estimates the monthly saving. Pick a profile or adjust the sliders.

Take an outlet of a coffee chain with 3,000 QRIS payments a month, 85% of them around Rp42,000. Before October it paid roughly Rp1.22 million a month in MDR. After October it pays about Rp470,000, all on the larger orders. Across a chain of 200 outlets, that is close to Rp1.8 billion a year that stays with the merchant. For an electronics store whose payments are mostly above Rp100,000, the saving is negligible.

The saving also changes a pricing question. Bank Indonesia has always prohibited merchants from passing the MDR on to customers, but many small shops quietly added a surcharge or refused QRIS for small purchases. With the fee gone on low-value payments, that friction has no justification left, and the remaining argument for cash at the till gets weaker.

India already ran this experiment, and paid for it

The closest precedent is India's Unified Payments Interface. In January 2020, the same month QRIS became mandatory, India set the MDR on UPI and RuPay debit transactions to zero. Volume exploded: UPI processed a record 24.51 billion transactions in August 2026 alone, close to 800 million a day.

The bill did not disappear. Because banks and payment apps were no longer paid by merchants, the Indian government started compensating them directly. It allocated ₹1,354 crore in FY2022–23, ₹1,466 crore in FY2023–24 and ₹1,500 crore for FY2024–25, paying a 0.15% incentive on UPI payments of up to ₹2,000 to small merchants. In other words, India kept the merchant price at zero and moved the cost to the public budget, with a threshold for low-value payments that resembles Indonesia's Rp100,000 line.

Brazil's Pix took a different route. Pix is free for individuals, while businesses can be charged fees set by their own banks. It processed nearly 80 billion transactions worth R$35.4 trillion in 2025.

Volumes are not directly comparable, because UPI and Pix include transfers between people while QRIS counts merchant payments. The policy comparison is the useful one. Indonesia has taken the merchant-friendly half of India's model without the fiscal half. That can work while the industry is growing fast enough to absorb the cost. The test comes when growth slows.

The outward-facing side of QRIS

QRIS is also becoming an export. Bank Indonesia reports that cross-border QRIS now works with Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea and China. As of late September 2026, inbound payments by foreign visitors reached 17.8 million transactions worth Rp6.2 trillion, against 5 million outbound transactions worth Rp1.85 trillion by Indonesians abroad. Deputy Governor Filianingsih Hendarta summed it up: Indonesia is "net inbound."

The system has drawn criticism as well as awards. In 2025 the Office of the US Trade Representative cited QRIS and Indonesia's national payment gateway as potential barriers for US card networks. Indonesian officials responded that foreign operators remain welcome and that QRIS is about interoperability. A zero-fee domestic rail for everyday payments sharpens that debate: it is very hard for card networks charging 1–2% to compete on a Rp40,000 coffee.

What to watch next

Three signals will show whether the policy works as intended. First, the share of QRIS volume from non-micro merchants: if chains and minimarkets push more payments onto QRIS, the waiver is doing its job. Second, the fee lines that payment companies change next, especially top-up charges, instant settlement fees and paid merchant dashboards. Third, consolidation among acquirers, which would be the clearest sign that zero-fee acceptance only pays for players with other income.

For businesses, the immediate step is simple: check which MDR band you are classified in with your acquirer, confirm that small payments are no longer charged, and remove any QRIS surcharge at the till. For a broader look at how payment and acquisition costs shape growth, see our guide to acquiring and retaining customers efficiently.

Frequently asked questions

What is QRIS?

QRIS (Quick Response Code Indonesian Standard) is Indonesia's national QR payment standard, set by Bank Indonesia and ASPI. One QRIS code can be paid from any participating bank or e-wallet app, and it has been mandatory for QR payments since 1 January 2020.

Is QRIS free now?

For merchants, QRIS is free on transactions up to Rp100,000 for all businesses from 1 October 2026, and up to Rp500,000 for micro businesses. Above those amounts, micro businesses pay 0.3% and other businesses pay 0.7%. Customers never pay MDR.

What is MDR on QRIS?

The merchant discount rate is the fee deducted from the merchant's proceeds for each QRIS payment. It is shared among the issuer, acquirer, switching company, ASPI and settlement institutions. Bank Indonesia does not keep any of it.

Can a merchant charge customers extra for paying with QRIS?

No. Bank Indonesia prohibits merchants from passing the MDR on to customers. With the fee waived on payments up to Rp100,000, a surcharge on small QRIS purchases has no basis.

Who loses revenue from the MDR waiver?

The payment industry: banks and e-wallets acting as issuers and acquirers, switching companies and ASPI. No compensation scheme has been announced. Some providers say they will rely on other services, such as top-ups, payment gateways and business financing.

Where can QRIS be used abroad?

As of September 2026, cross-border QRIS works in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea and China, with agreements signed with Hong Kong and Timor-Leste.

Sources

• BI Perluas MDR QRIS 0 Persen, Semua Merchant Bebas Biaya untuk Transaksi hingga Rp100 Ribu, Pajakonline
• QRIS Makin Murah! Mulai Oktober 2026, MDR 0 Persen Berlaku untuk Transaksi hingga Rp100 Ribu, Viva
• MDR QRIS, Bank Indonesia
• Transaksi QRIS Capai 15 Miliar hingga Juli 2026, IDX Channel, 6 September 2026
• Transaksi QRIS Melonjak 100,12 Persen di Semester I 2026, Infobanknews
• BI Mencatat Nilai Transaksi QRIS Capai Rp164,48 Triliun pada Januari 2026, Kontan
• Penggunaan QRIS Terus Meningkat, GoodStats
• BI catat transaksi QRIS antarnegara tembus Rp6,2 triliun, ANTARA, 26 September 2026
• MDR QRIS 0 persen dinilai memunculkan peluang pendapatan lain bagi PJP, ANTARA, 19 August 2026
• MDR QRIS untuk Transaksi hingga Rp500.000 Gratis, Penyedia Jasa Pembayaran Untung?, Kontan, 19 October 2024
• Alasan Transaksi QRIS Usaha 'Wong Cilik' Kena Biaya 0,3 Persen, CNN Indonesia, 14 July 2023
• Efek Berganda MDR QRIS 0%, Bisnis.com, 9 September 2026
• Cabinet approves incentive scheme for promotion of low-value BHIM-UPI transactions, Press Information Bureau, Government of India
• UPI Hits Highest-Ever Monthly Volume: 24.51 Billion Transactions in August 2026, StartupTalky
• Pix bate recorde em 2025 e movimenta R$35,4 trilhões, Metrópoles
• US cites QRIS as trade barrier, The Jakarta Post, 3 May 2025