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Standards/qr-code-cemac

QR Code CEMAC

TypeNational QR
PrimaryCFCGCMGAGQTD
MentionedCFCGCMGAGQTD
Completeness55%medium

Overview

The QR Code CEMAC, also called the "QR Code communautaire" or the "QR Code de paiement interopérable de la CEMAC", is the common payment QR code of the six member states of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community: Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon 1, 4. Its standards were made binding by Regulation N°02/26/CEMAC/UMAC/CORENOFI of 8 April 2026, and the governor of the regional central bank (BEAC) launched it in Douala on 29 July 2026 2, 3. Payments made with it are routed and cleared through the platform of GIMAC, the regional interbank group 1. The press describes it as built on EMVCo's QR payment specification (EMV QRCPS v1.1) and on ISO/IEC 18004 2, 3; the regulation's own text has not been published.

History

2023, a first ministerial text. At its ordinary session in Douala on 4 October 2023, the UMAC Ministerial Committee adopted a "Règlement relatif à l'homologation des normes du QR Code", according to the legal press 9. The sources we read don't explain how that text relates to the 2026 regulation.

2025, the code's first deployment in Gabon. GIMAC presented the national roll-out of the "QR Code GIMACPAY" at the BEAC in Libreville on 16 June 2025, with deployment planned over three months 11. GIMAC's own timeline lists the "Lancement du QR Code CEMAC" in 2025, together with its deployment in Gabon under the MaDigiPaie initiative 10. MaDigiPaie put GIMACPAY QR codes in Gabonese shops and public offices from 9 December 2025 Gabon report.

April 2026, the regulation. Meeting in N'Djamena on 6 April 2026, the BEAC's board of directors gave its binding opinion ("avis conforme") on the draft regulation on QR code standards 8. Two days later the UMAC Ministerial Committee adopted Regulation N°02/26/CEMAC/UMAC/CORENOFI of 8 April 2026, "portant homologation des normes du QR Code, de la lettre de change automatisée et du prélèvement automatique dans la CEMAC" 2. A legal analysis says the regulation gives binding force to specifications that had been each operator's internal technical choices, and that payment service providers, e-money institutions and commercial banks in the six states must follow one common framework 3.

July 2026, the launch. On 29 July 2026 in Douala the BEAC governor, who chairs the regional financial standards committee CORENOFI, launched the code 7, 4. The COBAC secretary general, GIMAC's director general and the heads of the region's banks attended 1.

Technical specification

Property Value
Issuer CORENOFI (Comité régional de normalisation financière) under the BEAC; homologated by the UMAC Ministerial Committee 4, 2
Legal basis Regulation N°02/26/CEMAC/UMAC/CORENOFI of 8 April 2026 2
Data format EMV QRCPS v1.1 structures, in TLV (tag-length-value) form 2, 3
Symbology QR Code (ISO 18004) 2, 7
Modes Merchant-presented (the customer scans the merchant's code, the main mode) and consumer-presented (the merchant scans the customer's code, usually with an equipped terminal) 4, 5
Security Alignment with EMVCo standards and PIN authentication, as listed by the BEAC 5
Routing and clearing GIMAC platform 1

The payload layout has not been published. Neither the regulation nor the CORENOFI norm appears on the BEAC's page of payment-system instructions, circulars and regulations 13 or among GIMAC's published documents, so the field-level description below comes from a third party and is unconfirmed.

The integrity check. Two press accounts of the launch say integrity is checked by a cyclic redundancy check, "CRC-32" 2, 3. We could not check this against the regulation, because its text is not public. It would be unusual: section 4.7.3.1 of EMV QRCPS, as quoted by the cemacqr library, computes the checksum "according to [ISO/IEC 13239] using the polynomial '1021' (hex) and initial value 'FFFF' (hex)", a 16-bit CRC carried as four hexadecimal characters in data object ID 63 12 (see EMVCo MPM). An open-source library for the CEMAC code, cemacqr, says the CORENOFI norm Spécifications du QR code pour l'acceptation des paiements interopérables dans la CEMAC (v2.1, March 2025) prescribes that same EMVCo checksum, quoting it as "conformément à [ISO/CEI 13239] en utilisant le polynôme '1021' (hex) et la valeur initiale 'FFFF' (hex)", and that a payload built with CRC-32 would be rejected 12. That claim rests on the library author's reading of the norm, which we have not seen.

CEMAC-specific rules, per the same library. cemacqr reads the CORENOFI norm v2.1 as requiring currency 950 (the Central African CFA franc, XAF), a country code from CM, CF, CG, GA, GQ or TD, and a mandatory "CEMAC payment system" data object, ID 50, inside the Additional Data Field Template (ID 62) 12. It flags two things it cannot settle: two different Globally Unique Identifiers for the Merchant Account Information template in different parts of the norm, and whether the text homologated in April 2026 differs from v2.1 12.

Use cases

  • Merchant payments. The stated aim is that a merchant takes payment with one code whatever bank or mobile wallet the customer uses 6, for individuals, merchants and businesses across the zone 1.
  • Public payments in Gabon. MaDigiPaie, run by Gabon's Ministry of the Digital Economy with the BEAC and GIMAC, put the codes in public offices as well as shops Gabon report.
  • Financial inclusion. The BEAC presents it as a way to bring informal businesses into formal payment circuits and to support local fintechs 5.

Scale. In the Gabon pilot nearly 3 million wallets were already able to pay by QR and 2,000 codes were deployed; GIMAC aims for 20,000 codes by the end of 2026 and 120,000 by 2027, and 24 institutions in the region already used the technology 4. Forbes Afrique also reports the 120,000-code plan 6.

Implementations

  • bryand410/cemacqr (Python, Apache-2.0, 1 star, created October 2026, last commit October 2026) builds, parses and validates CEMAC payloads with no dependencies, and is published on PyPI as cemacqr 0.1.2 12, 14. It does not claim to be official or endorsed by the BEAC, CORENOFI or GIMAC, and reports "VALID, SUBJECT TO UNCHECKED RULES" because the homologated text is not readable 12. It is listed despite its single star because no other CEMAC-specific library was found.
  • Generic EMVCo libraries such as mvallim/emv-qrcode (Java, 136 stars, last commit May 2026) and dongri/emv-qrcode (Go, 60 stars, last commit September 2026) encode and parse EMV QRCPS payloads 16, 17, but carry no CEMAC profile.

No decoder specific to the CEMAC code was found; any QR decoder reads the symbol, and the libraries above parse the TLV payload.

Comparison

vs. EMVCo MPM. The CEMAC code is described as a regional profile of EMV QRCPS v1.1 2, the version of both EMVCo QR specifications, merchant-presented and consumer-presented, published on 27 November 2020 15. Per cemacqr, what makes a well-formed EMVCo payload a CEMAC one is the fixed currency 950, the six permitted country codes and the mandatory ID 50 object inside template 62 12.

vs. Gabon's GIMACPAY QR. The GIMACPAY codes of MaDigiPaie came first, in Gabon from 2025, and GIMAC's timeline treats that roll-out as the CEMAC code's first deployment 10, 11. The regulation extends one binding standard to all six states and to banks, payment institutions and e-money issuers alike 3.

vs. SOMQR. Like Somalia's national QR, the CEMAC code is an EMVCo-based standard set by a central bank whose specification is not public; it differs in being regional, covering six countries and one currency.

Fun facts

  • According to cemacqr, the worked example in Annex 4 of the CORENOFI norm encodes currency 952, the code of the West African CFA franc (XOF), although the norm's own table requires 950 for the Central African franc. The library enforces the table and reproduces the example's checksum, 3FD3, with the EMVCo 16-bit CRC 12.
  • The same regulation that homologates the QR code also homologates the automated bill of exchange and automatic direct debit 2.

Status

Active, early roll-out. Launched on 29 July 2026 and binding under the April 2026 regulation 1, 3. Outside Gabon's pilot, the country reports found no bank or wallet issuing the code in Cameroon, the Republic of the Congo, Chad, the Central African Republic or Equatorial Guinea as of 20 October 2026 Cameroon report, Congo report, Chad report, Central African Republic report, Equatorial Guinea report. The legal press notes that liability for technical failure or fraud across several providers "n'est pas explicitée dans les éléments communiqués à ce stade" 3.

Sources

Deployments

Found in the following country reports (grep across reports/countries/):

source · content/standards/qr-code-cemac/index.md