# KHQR > Source: https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/khqr > research date 2026-05-29 · extracted at 2026-10-03 > Publisher: Barcoder — encyclopedia of QR, barcode and payment-code standards Specifications: - [Bakong — National Bank of Cambodia (official)](https://bakong.nbc.gov.kh/en/) - [Bakong Cambodia case study — Soramitsu](https://soramitsu.co.jp/cambodia-bakong/) ## Overview **KHQR** (Khmer QR) is **Cambodia's national EMV QR payment standard**, operated by the **National Bank of Cambodia (NBC)** and built on the **Bakong** blockchain-based central-bank-controlled payment infrastructure [1][1], [2][2], [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH). Bakong launched in **October 2020** as **the world's first central-bank-controlled DLT-based ("CBDC-like") retail payment system**, built jointly by NBC and the **Japanese blockchain company Soramitsu** on the **Hyperledger Iroha** framework [3][3], [4][4]. KHQR followed in **July 2022** as the EMV-compliant QR overlay on top of Bakong, providing unified merchant-side QR acceptance across all participating institutions [3][3], [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH). By 2024 the Bakong+KHQR ecosystem had **30 million wallets, 4.5 million accepting merchants, and processed $104.81 billion in 608 million transactions** — an extraordinary **330 % of Cambodia's GDP in transaction value** [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH). **Cross-border KHQR connectivity** is the most extensive of any small-country payment system: live or active with **Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Singapore, South Korea, China (Alipay+)** and with India UPI link planned for H2 2026 [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH). ## History **2016 — NBC begins CBDC work** [3][3]: The National Bank of Cambodia inaugurates Project Bakong — its central-bank-digital-currency-like initiative. Cambodia's payment landscape at that time was challenging: **dual-currency** (KHR + USD widely circulating), low banking penetration, mobile money fragmented across multiple operators, and ongoing dollarization concerns from the central bank. **2017 — NBC selects Hyperledger Iroha** [3][3]: After evaluating distributed-ledger options, NBC chose Hyperledger Iroha (a blockchain platform written in C++ by Soramitsu) as the ideal DLT for retail CBDC use. The collaboration with **Soramitsu** (Japanese fintech, also LFDecentralizedTrust contributor) ran from 2017 onwards. **July 2019 — Bakong pilot** [3][3]: Pilot project launched with 10,000+ users, running successfully through 2019–2020. **October 2020 — Bakong public launch** [3][3], [4][4]: Bakong officially launched to the public. The system supports both KHR and USD, P2P/P2B/B2B transfers, and cross-border connectivity. **Designed explicitly to support de-dollarization** — by making KHR digital payments easier than USD cash, NBC nudges consumer / merchant preference toward KHR. **July 2022 — KHQR launches as Bakong's QR overlay** [3][3]: NBC introduces KHQR as the EMV-compliant unified QR layer on top of Bakong. Single QR accepts payments from all 57 participating financial institutions and mobile money operators. **Subsequent milestones** [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH), [5][5]: - **2023** — Cross-border KHQR with **Thailand (PromptPay), Vietnam (VietQR), Laos (LaoQR)** active. - **2024** — Cross-border with **Malaysia (DuitNow) live**; **South Korea (Kakao Pay)** live August 2024. - **August 19, 2024** — **Bakong Tourists App** launched in Siem Reap, enabling foreign visitors to make payments via Bakong's network using their home banking credentials. - **November 2024** — **Mastercard** integration with Bakong Tourists App. - **January 22, 2025** — **Visa** integration with Bakong Tourists App. - **March 2025** — **Japan JPQR Global** MoU signed for cross-border QR. - **2025** — Cambodia-Singapore (RoamQR) Phase 1 launched. - **H2 2026 planned** — **India UPI** cross-border link. - **2024 KHR transactions grew 334 %** [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH) — direct evidence Bakong's de-dollarization push is succeeding; **49 % of transactions are now in KHR**. ## Technical specification KHQR is an **EMVCo Merchant-Presented Mode (MPM)** compliant QR overlay on top of the **Bakong** blockchain-based payment rail [3][3], [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH): | Layer | Description | |---|---| | **Underlying rail** | **Bakong** — distributed-ledger-technology payment system on Hyperledger Iroha | | **DLT framework** | **Hyperledger Iroha** (C++) by Soramitsu (Japan) | | **Settlement** | Real-time via Bakong; 24/7/365 | | **Currency support** | **KHR and USD** (dual-currency native) | | **QR format** | EMVCo MPM TLV | | **Underlying symbology** | [QR Code](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/qr-code) (ISO/IEC 18004) | | **Currency codes** | 116 (KHR), 840 (USD) | **EMVCo MPM foundation** [5][5]: - Payload format: **TLV (Tag-Length-Value)** plain-text string - Integrity: CRC-16/CCITT-FALSE appended as field `63` - Static and dynamic QR variants supported **Modes** [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH), [3][3]: - **Merchant-presented QR (static)** — printed sticker per merchant; customer enters amount. - **Merchant-presented QR (dynamic)** — POS-generated per transaction with amount embedded. - **Consumer-presented QR** — customer's app displays QR for merchant POS to scan. - **Cross-border** — KHQR-Global variant for inbound foreign tourist payments via bilateral integrations. **Bakong's distinguishing technical features** [3][3], [4][4]: - **Hyperledger Iroha blockchain** — distributed ledger for transaction recording; not a public chain but a permissioned-DLT operated by NBC. - **Dual-currency native** — every Bakong account holds separate KHR and USD balances; user can pay in either currency seamlessly. - **No transaction fees** for P2P transfers (NBC subsidises the rail). - **57 participating financial institutions** as of 2024 — all major Cambodian banks + mobile money + microfinance institutions. ## Use cases KHQR's deployment spans the entire spectrum of Cambodian commerce, with notable strength in **tourism payments** [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH), [3][3]: - **Retail point of sale** — every kind of merchant from market vendors to chain supermarkets. **4.5 million accepting merchants** in a country of ~17 million population — extraordinarily high merchant-per-capita density. - **Tuk-tuk and motodop (motorcycle taxi) payments** — QR sticker on the driver's phone or vehicle accepts fare via KHQR scan. - **Street food and informal commerce** — printable-QR-sticker advantage works at otherwise-untrackable transaction points. - **Bill payments** — utilities, telecom, government fees. - **Tourism payments** — **Bakong Tourists App** (launched August 2024) enables foreign visitors to pay at KHQR merchants using their home bank credentials via the Mastercard / Visa integration. Particularly important for the Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) tourist economy. - **Cross-border** — Cambodian Bakong users paying foreign merchants via the bilateral cross-border QR network (Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia, Korea, China-via-Alipay+). - **Government disbursement** — social benefit payments increasingly routed through Bakong wallets. - **De-dollarization** — every KHQR transaction in KHR rather than USD reinforces the riel's domestic currency role. **Scale (2024)** [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH): - **30 million Bakong wallets** - **4.5 million accepting merchants** - **608 million transactions** in 2024 - **$104.81 billion value** — **330 % of Cambodia's GDP** - **+95 % growth** from 2023 - **KHR transactions grew 334 %** in 2024 (de-dollarization signal) - **49 % of transactions now in KHR** (vs USD) ## Implementations KHQR's open-source library ecosystem is **thin**; production integration goes through NBC + Soramitsu + bank-acquirer channels [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH), [3][3]. **Production apps consuming KHQR** [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH): | App | Provider | Notes | |---|---|---| | **Bakong** | NBC | Official central-bank wallet | | **ACLEDA Mobile** | ACLEDA Bank (largest Cambodian bank) | KHQR-enabled | | **ABA Mobile** | ABA Bank | Digital banking leader | | **Wing** | Wing | Mobile money pioneer | | **TrueMoney** | TrueMoney | Cross-border-capable wallet | | **Bakong Tourists App** | NBC (foreign visitors) | Mastercard + Visa integration | **General EMVCo MPM libraries** can read KHQR payloads (since KHQR is EMVCo MPM with Cambodian merchant-account-information templates) — same compatibility pattern as [SGQR](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/sgqr), [PromptPay QR](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/promptpay-qr), [QRIS](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/qris), [DuitNow QR](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/duitnow-qr), [VietQR](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/vietqr). **Soramitsu** [3][3], [4][4] — the Japanese fintech that built Bakong's Hyperledger Iroha foundation continues to provide technical support; the **Soramitsu case study with Hyperledger** is the canonical technical reference for Bakong's architecture [3][3]. **Acquirer / merchant onboarding**: - Each of the **57 Bakong participating institutions** handles its own merchant onboarding. - **ACLEDA Bank** (the largest Cambodian bank) is a particularly important KHQR acquirer. - International PSPs increasingly support KHQR for cross-border merchant integration. ## Comparison **vs. ASEAN EMVCo MPM family ([SGQR](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/sgqr), [DuitNow QR](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/duitnow-qr), [PromptPay QR](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/promptpay-qr), [QRIS](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/qris), [VietQR](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/vietqr))** — Same technical family; same central-bank-affiliated operator pattern; same EMVCo MPM TLV foundation. KHQR's distinctive features: - **Built on Hyperledger Iroha blockchain** — most peers use traditional payment rails (SCT Inst, RTGS, IPS). Bakong's DLT-based architecture is structurally different. - **Dual-currency KHR + USD native** — peers handle a single domestic currency. - **De-dollarization motivation** — peers don't share this strategic context. - **Cross-border breadth** — KHQR has **9+ active or pending cross-border integrations**, possibly the most of any small-country payment system. **vs. [Pix](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/pix) (Brazil)** — Both central-bank-operated national instant payment systems. Pix is much larger (250B+ vs Bakong's 608M annual transactions, but Cambodia's population is ~17M vs Brazil's ~215M), and uses standard SCT-style rails rather than DLT. Pix and Bakong launched within a year of each other (Pix: November 2020; Bakong: October 2020). Different technical architectures, comparable national-scale ambitions [[pix-ref]]. **vs. [UPI QR](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/upi-qr) (India)** — Both regulator-orchestrated national QR systems; UPI uses a `upi://pay?...` URI rather than EMVCo TLV. India-Cambodia bilateral UPI ↔ KHQR link planned for H2 2026 [India report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/IN), [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH). **vs. e-CNY (China digital yuan) and other CBDCs** — Bakong is **often cited as the world's first deployed CBDC-like retail payment system** [6][6], [3][3], though purists distinguish: - Bakong: NBC controls the system, settles in commercial-bank money (the assets users hold are still bank deposits at participating banks, not direct central-bank claims) → **CBDC-like but not strictly a CBDC**. - e-CNY (China): users hold direct claims on the People's Bank of China → **strict CBDC**. The distinction matters for monetary-economics analysis but **operationally Bakong looks and feels like a CBDC** to users. NBC and many observers describe Bakong as the world's first deployed central-bank-controlled digital currency at retail scale [6][6]. **vs. [M-Pesa KE](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/standards/m-pesa-ke) (Kenya)** — Both are dominant African / Asian mobile-money-class systems with large unbanked-population financial-inclusion impact. M-Pesa is older (2007), Bakong is newer (2020), but Bakong's central-bank-controlled DLT architecture is structurally more advanced. Both achieve massive merchant density relative to country population [[m-pesa-ref]]. ## Fun facts **Bakong is often cited as the world's first deployed CBDC-like retail payment system** [6][6], [3][3] — launched October 2020 by NBC + Soramitsu on Hyperledger Iroha. The World Economic Forum and various central-banking publications have profiled Bakong as showing the rest of the world's central banks the path to retail CBDC deployment. Subsequent CBDC pilots and launches (e-CNY in China, Sand Dollar in Bahamas, JAM-DEX in Jamaica, Pakistan's pilot, etc.) all reference Bakong as a structural precedent. **$104.81 billion in 608 million transactions = 330 % of Cambodia's GDP** [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH) — one of the most extreme transaction-value-to-GDP ratios of any national payment system. The high ratio reflects: - High velocity of money flowing through Bakong (the same dollar / riel moves through many transactions). - Cross-border tourism inflows. - Domestic commerce + remittance flows + government disbursements all routing through Bakong. **KHR transactions grew 334 % in 2024**; **49 % of Bakong transactions are now in KHR** [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH) — concrete evidence that NBC's de-dollarization-via-Bakong strategy is working. Pre-Bakong (2019), Cambodia's economy was **~80 % USD-denominated** for retail transactions; the Bakong push toward KHR-denominated digital payments is **slowly reversing dollarisation** through user-experience design (KHR Bakong payments are easier than USD cash for everyday commerce). **Soramitsu's name** comes from a Japanese pillow-word (枕詞) — an ancient poetic epithet historically used for "Yamato" (Japan) and roughly meaning "filling the sky" / "abundant with sky"; the company invokes this for the metaphor of "building blockchain infrastructure that encompasses the world". The Japan-Cambodia central-bank-and-blockchain-company partnership is structurally unusual; most national payment systems are built by domestic technology companies. Soramitsu's involvement made Bakong an early Asian deployment of Japanese-developed Hyperledger Iroha at scale. **Cambodia is the most cross-border-QR-connected small country in the world** [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH) — 9+ active or pending bilateral / multilateral QR integrations across ASEAN, East Asia (Korea, Japan, China-via-Alipay+), and South Asia (India UPI planned H2 2026). For a country of 17 million, this cross-border breadth is exceptional and structurally important: Cambodia's tourism economy + remittance inflows + cross-border-trade integration all benefit from QR-payment interoperability. The **Bakong Tourists App** (launched August 19, 2024 at Siem Reap — the gateway to Angkor Wat) [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH) is one of the more product-novel offerings in the national-QR-payment space. Foreign tourists who would normally need to exchange cash to KHR / USD before arrival can instead use their home Mastercard or Visa to fund a temporary Bakong wallet, then pay KHQR merchants in Cambodia using the same wallet. This is **structurally different from the Alipay+ cross-border model** (which routes through partner wallets in the visitor's home country); Bakong Tourists is a **temporary in-country wallet provisioned for the visitor**. ## Status **Active, scaling fast, internationalising aggressively** [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH), [3][3]: - **30 million Bakong wallets** - **4.5 million accepting merchants** - **608 million transactions (2024)** — +95 % YoY - **$104.81 billion transaction value (2024)** — 330 % of GDP - **KHR share growing**: 49 % in 2024, +334 % KHR growth - **9+ cross-border QR integrations** (Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Singapore, Korea, Japan-via-JPQR-MoU, China-via-Alipay+, India H2 2026 planned) - **Bakong Tourists App** with Mastercard (Nov 2024) + Visa (Jan 2025) integration **Strategic trajectory** [Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH): - **Continued de-dollarization** — KHR share continues to grow as Bakong reduces USD-cash dependence. - **India UPI link** for H2 2026 — extends cross-border footprint into South Asia. - **Multilateral Project Nexus** (BIS-coordinated) — Cambodia is engaging with the broader ASEAN cross-border payment-coordination initiative. - **Continued Hyperledger Iroha evolution** — Soramitsu continues to support NBC with technical upgrades to the underlying DLT. No deprecation planned. KHQR + Bakong is one of the most strategically-distinctive national payment systems globally, demonstrating that **a small country can build world-class payment infrastructure with the right combination of central-bank political will, fintech partnership (Soramitsu), and modern DLT architecture**. ## Sources [1]: https://bakong.nbc.gov.kh/en/ [2]: https://www.transfi.com/blog/cambodias-payment-rails-how-they-work---bakong-khqr-the-national-push-for-financial-inclusion [3]: https://www.lfdecentralizedtrust.org/case-studies/soramitsu-case-study [4]: https://soramitsu.co.jp/cambodia-bakong/ [5]: https://www.emvco.com/emv-technologies/qr-codes/ [6]: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/08/cambodias-digital-currency-ishowing-other-central-banks-the-way/ [7]: https://www.moderntreatise.com/asia-pacific/2026/4/1/far-east-blockchain-powered-bakong-system-transforms-daily-transactions-in-cambodia [8]: https://www.khmertimeskh.com/501415121/bakong-begins-global-trip/ [9]: https://www.lightspark.com/knowledge/cambodia-real-time-payments [10]: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aepr.12464 [kh-cro]: https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH [pix-ref]: https://docs.barcoder.ai/source/standards/pix [in-cro]: https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/IN [m-pesa-ref]: https://docs.barcoder.ai/source/standards/m-pesa-ke 1. [Bakong — NBC (official)][1] 2. [Cambodia payment rails — Transfi][2] 3. [NBC + Soramitsu Hyperledger Iroha case study — LFDecentralizedTrust][3] 4. [Bakong Cambodia — Soramitsu][4] 5. [EMV QR Code Specifications — EMVCo][5] 6. [Cambodia digital currency — World Economic Forum][6] 7. [Blockchain-powered Bakong — Modern Treatise][7] 8. [Bakong begins global trip — Khmer Times][8] 9. [Cambodia Real-Time Payments — Lightspark][9] 10. [CBDC in highly dollarized Cambodia — Wiley][10] 11. [KH-cambodia.md][Cambodia report](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH) ## Deployments Found in the following country reports (grep across `reports/countries/`): - **KH** — [KH-cambodia.md](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/KH) - **LA** — [LA-laos.md](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/LA) - **TH** — [TH-thailand.md](https://docs.barcoder.ai/docs/payments/TH)