Bangladesh Bank Eliminates Interchange Fees for All Bangla QR Payments

Bangladesh Bank has reset the economics of its national QR payment system by setting the Interchange Reimbursement Fee at zero percent for all Bangla QR transactions, according to a directive issued by the central bank's Payment Systems Department-2 on August 10, 2026 that is designed to compress merchant-facing transaction costs and reinforce the statutory framework underpinning the country's transition to a cashless economy.

The instrument, PSD-2 Circular Letter No. 06, formally eliminates the fee and service-charge component that the issuing institution could previously levy on the acquiring institution for each QR-mediated payment, thereby converting what had been a two-sided revenue arrangement into an acquirer-only model and reshaping the incentive architecture across the Bangla QR ecosystem.

Scope and statutory mechanics

The directive applies uniformly across four institutional categories — scheduled banks, mobile financial service providers, payment service providers and payment system operators — establishing a single zero-IRF regime irrespective of the type of payment institution routing the transaction. Operatively, it amends the relevant provisions of PSD Circular No. 02/2025, issued February 8, 2025, while leaving that circular's other provisions intact, and it expressly repeals PSD-2 Circular Letter No. 05, which had been issued July 1, 2026. The activation date is October 1, 2026, a roughly seven-week implementation window during which affected institutions must reconfigure pricing tables and bilateral settlement arrangements before the new binding structure takes effect.

Structural and fiscal implications

The policy is targeted specifically at the small-value retail segment: street vendors, micro-merchants and other low-ticket businesses, where the proportional weight of fixed per-transaction costs has historically compressed acquirer margins and depressed QR acceptance. By excising the interchange leg, Bangladesh Bank has reduced the marginal cost of acceptance at the bottom of the merchant pyramid, but has simultaneously withdrawn a low-margin revenue stream from issuers that, aggregated across total QR volume, carries measurable implications for the unit economics of payment institutions reliant on cross-subsidization. The shift effectively transfers pricing leverage from issuers to acquirers, and the commercial case for continued aggressive merchant onboarding now depends on acquirers' ability to monetize through transaction volume, settlement float, or adjacent service revenue rather than per-transaction interchange.

Forward signals

The October 1 activation will serve as the first empirical test of whether acquirers maintain onboarding velocity under compressed margins, and whether merchant-side adoption registers a quantifiable step-up in the final quarter of 2026. Separately, reporting cited by daily-sun.com indicates that Visa is evaluating investment and technology cooperation to deepen its presence in Bangladesh's digital payments market — a signal that the regulatory recalibration is being read by international card networks as a constructive opening for capital deployment. The variable to monitor in subsequent circulars is whether issuers, having forfeited IRF revenue, seek to reintroduce alternative revenue mechanisms through scheme fees or bilateral side-arrangements, or whether Bangladesh Bank treats the zero-IRF structure as the terminal pricing floor for the Bangla QR ecosystem.