What Bharat QR is
Bharat QR is a common QR code format for merchant payments in India. It was developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) together with Mastercard and Visa, and introduced around 2016 to 2017, with RuPay and later American Express also taking part. Instead of showing a separate sticker for each network, a merchant can display one code that participating banking apps can read.
The format is based on the EMVCo Merchant-Presented Mode specification. Each network’s merchant identifier sits in its own merchant account information template, and a UPI address can be included as well, so the same code can be paid from a card-linked app or a UPI app.
How it differs from a plain UPI QR code
A plain UPI QR code carries only a upi://pay link and moves money through UPI. A Bharat QR code is an EMV-style payload that can carry several payment identifiers at once. In everyday use many small merchants display UPI codes, while Bharat QR is issued mainly through acquiring banks to merchants that also accept cards.