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Comment by vishnugupta | Hacker News Reader

> How is QR any different than NFC from a user perspective?

Back when AliPay and others were scaling up not too many phones had NFC.

However, more importantly, QR is way better from merchant's stand point. A static QR code is a thing of beauty. A tiny mom-and-shop merchant could take a printout and stick it up on their physical store front. It allowed AliPay to onboard of hundreds of thousands of merchants with minimal or no operations team on the ground. This strategy was almost 100% replicated in India by Paytm and their ilk. It was incredible to see even the smallest of shops with a printed QR codes stuck to their push carts, rickety shops etc.,

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Until everyone starts faking receipts, and then you’re back to terminals and someone validating they did receive a payment.

Or they go the other way and they’re scanning your QR code.

Basically, it isn’t actually better than NFC, just different. And maybe a little worse for speed, but better for donations or things that anything is better than nothing.

"Anything is better than nothing" is exactly the point. We are talking about businesses that run on a shoestring here. Peddlers, street vendors, people who may not even have a phone of their own but one of their family members does, and that's whose QR code they have printed out to accept payments. In a society where nobody carries cash any more, the best you can hope for as a bottom-rung vendor is that your customers aren't desperate enough to try cheat you out of a few kuai.

At the next level up, of course, vendors will have their own phone so they can check their notifications to make sure that a payment went through. And that is a big step forward for vendors in developing countries - there's no risk of receiving counterfeit currency with electronic transactions.

Unfortunately the bottom rung can least afford the fraud.

If the currency is good enough to fool a street vendor, it’s probably good enough to spend with their suppliers. Not like they’re sticking it in a bank. I suspect those street vendors are also not accepting bills so large they’re worth counterfeiting.

Chargeback fraud of course being more likely with credit card payments - but again, unlikely for small vendor transactions. It’s not worth it for anyone.

The argument that people don’t carry cash anymore is certainly real enough - and the beggars/window washer at a red light types are the most impacted rather than real merchants.

Most QR systems (in merchant presented mode, anyway) require good internet connectivity, which may not be a given in developing markets. This isn't a problem for NFC.

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