Indonesia QR payment searches surge 475%

It showed the fastest growth amongst six Southeast Asian markets.

Searches for national QR payment systems are rising across Southeast Asia, with Indonesia showing the fastest growth.

Interest in Indonesia’s Quick Response Code Indonesian Standard, or QRIS, rose 475% between the first half of 2022 and the same period in 2026, the fastest increase amongst the six markets in the region.

Searches for the Philippines’ QR Ph more than tripled, rising 208%. Merchant-related phrases such as “accept QR Ph” only began appearing in Google Trends data in 2025, suggesting that more sellers are starting to adopt the system.

The shift is most evident in searches for each country’s national QR payment system, according to a PayMongo analysis of five years of Google Trends data from Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

Search interest in Thailand’s PromptPay rose 50%, whilst searches for Singapore’s SGQR increased 31%.

The data also showed that merchants were increasingly searching for instructions on how to create QR codes and receive payments.

In Indonesia, searches for “buat QRIS”, or “create a QRIS code”, rose 626%. In Vietnam, searches for “tạo mã QR ngân hàng”, or “create a bank QR”, increased 215%.

Vietnam’s consumer searches for how to scan QR codes have eased from their pandemic-era highs, but merchant searches have continued to rise. 

Searches for VietQR creation and QR codes used to receive money, which were barely recorded in 2022, reached five-year highs in 2026.

Singapore showed a similar shift towards smaller sellers. Searches for “PayNow Corporate” fell 61%, whilst searches for “accept PayNow” increased more than tenfold. 

This suggests that adoption is expanding amongst hawkers, freelancers and micro-businesses after larger companies moved to digital payments earlier.

Malaysia and Thailand recorded slower growth after much of their merchant adoption took place during pandemic-era e-wallet programmes. Searches for Malaysia’s DuitNow were 15% below their 2023 peak.

Across the four markets where payment searches are still increasing — Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Singapore — merchant-related QR searches are now growing faster than consumer searches.

The broader merchant-payment data followed the same pattern. Comparing January to June 2026 with the same period in 2022, searches showing an intention to accept digital payments rose 223% in Indonesia, 175% in Vietnam, 66% in the Philippines and 45% in Singapore.

Search growth was also recorded amongst newer e-wallet providers. Searches related to Vietnam’s ZaloPay rose 115%. 

In the Philippines, Maya-related payment searches increased about twenty-five-fold from a near-zero base in 2022, whilst GCash searches rose 35%. Searches for Dana for Business in Indonesia also increased 35%.

PayMongo said the findings showed that merchant adoption was growing fastest in markets where QR payment onboarding was more recent.

The analysis was based on monthly Google Trends data from July 2021 to July 2026. Growth figures compared average search interest from January to June 2026 with the same six-month period in 2022.

Google Trends measures relative search interest on a scale of zero to 100 rather than absolute search volumes. Results can therefore be compared over time within each country, but not directly between countries.