A visitor is standing at your counter, or on your website, holding a phone with no Nepali bank account and no Nepali wallet. Can they pay you?
Increasingly yes, and the answer has changed a lot in two years. Nepal Rastra Bank now publishes the actual figures, so this does not have to be guesswork.
What actually happens, in numbers
From NRB's Payment Systems Oversight Report FY 2024/25, here is every cross-border QR payment made in Nepal in the year to mid-July 2025:
| Rail | Transactions | Value (NPR) | Average payment |
|---|---|---|---|
| UPI (India) | 981,654 | 2.69 billion | Rs 2,744 |
| Alipay+ | 6,102 | 89.9 million | Rs 14,730 |
| 5,701 | 84.5 million | Rs 14,827 | |
| Union Pay | 125 | 1.0 million | Rs 8,080 |
| Total | 993,582 | 2.87 billion |
Three things stand out.
Cross-border QR in Nepal is basically India. UPI is 98.8% of the transactions and 94% of the money. Everything else put together is a tiny fraction of that.
Chinese wallets spend far more per visit. An Alipay+ or WeChat payment averages over Rs 14,700, more than five times the average UPI payment. Fewer customers, much bigger purchases. If you sell to Chinese visitors, a small number of payments moves real money.
Union Pay did 125 transactions all year. Not 125 thousand. One hundred and twenty five. Worth knowing before you spend any effort on it.
For scale, all of this cross-border activity is about 0.3% of Nepal's QR payment value. It is real, it is growing, and it is still small.
Which visitors can pay you today
- Indian visitors are the big one. They can pay a Nepali QR from their usual UPI apps, and NRB records the acceptance reaching around 1.7 million merchants through one payment system operator, starting March 2024.
- Chinese visitors can pay with Alipay+ and WeChat, enabled by particular providers and by some commercial banks.
- Union Pay acceptance exists and NRB has approved a scheme operator to acquire Union Pay merchant QR transactions, though the volume above tells you how little it is used so far.
- Visa cardholders may be able to scan too. Visa and Fonepay have announced a Scan to Pay arrangement for cardholders whose card is tokenised in a wallet app. We have not confirmed this against a Visa or Fonepay page directly, so treat it as reported rather than settled, and test it before you rely on it. Either way it is a card paying a QR, not a card being typed into a checkout.
- Sri Lanka is coming: NRB records approval for cross-border QR issuance with Sri Lanka through LankaPay.
Who still cannot pay you
Everyone above pays from an app they already have. So the visitors you cannot reach are the ones whose home rail is not on that list.
A traveller from Germany or Australia, with no UPI app, no Alipay+ or WeChat, and no tokenised Visa card, has no QR route to you at all. No Nepali QR will help them. For those customers you still need a card checkout, cash, or a bank transfer.
What it costs you
Cross-border is where "QR is free" stops being true.
eSewa publishes the merchant charge for cross-border wallets at 1.95% per transaction for UPI, and the same 1.95% for Alipay+. The first of those pages also states that "Domestic QR Payments shall continue to be free of any charges".
So the shape is: domestic QR starts at zero, cross-border costs you about two percent. It buys you a customer who otherwise could not have paid you, but it should not surprise you at month end.
One honest note on that figure. It is published by a provider, not measured by us. We have not yet seen a cross-border payment carry a fee in our own settlement data, so treat 1.95% as the published rate rather than a confirmed one, and check your own settlement report.
Does this matter for your business?
Be honest about your customers before you spend effort here:
- Trekking, hotels, restaurants, handicrafts, anything on a tourist route. Yes. Indian visitors alone are nearly a million payments a year, and Chinese visitors spend the most per payment.
- Selling online to Nepalis only. No. Cross-border acceptance changes nothing for you.
- Selling online to Nepalis living abroad. Careful, this is a different problem. Someone in Sydney is not scanning your QR. They need a card checkout, which is a separate question covered in is Fonepay QR enough.
Cross-border QR is a counter technology. It works when the visitor is standing in front of you.
Frequently asked questions
Can an Indian tourist pay my Fonepay QR?
Yes. Indian visitors can pay Nepali merchant QRs from their usual UPI apps, and this is by far the most used cross-border rail in the country.
Do tourists need eSewa or Khalti to pay me?
No. They pay your QR from whatever app they already use at home, so there is nothing for them to install and nothing for you to explain at the counter.
What does a cross-border payment cost me?
eSewa publishes 1.95% per transaction to the merchant on both UPI and Alipay+ payments, against Rs 0 on domestic QR. Your own terms come from your acquiring bank, so confirm with them and read your settlement report.
Should I add support for Union Pay?
Probably not, on this evidence. Union Pay accounted for 125 cross-border QR transactions in Nepal across an entire fiscal year.
Next steps
- Understand your domestic costs first: why nobody can tell you what QR costs.
- Selling to people who are not in Nepal: is Fonepay QR enough for online payments.
- Accept eSewa, Khalti and Fonepay through one integration: start free.