One QR Code That Works Across Tanzania

Two numbers from Tanzania sit uneasily side by side. In 2025, the number of merchants accepting digital payments climbed to 2.79 million, more than twice the 2024 figure. Yet the most recent national survey of how adults use financial services found that only 3% had paid a merchant with a merchant pay number in the past month.

For payments executive Ivo Bozukov, the space between those figures holds the most interesting question: what turns a code on the wall into a habit at the till?

One code, every provider

In August 2022, the Bank of Tanzania published the Tanzania Quick Response Code Standard, known as TANQR. It applies to all banks and electronic money issuers that give QR codes to merchants, as well as any other payment provider entering the field. The accompanying circular took effect on 1 September 2022 and gave providers a year to migrate the codes merchants were already using.

The principle is straightforward. Instead of each provider issuing codes to its own format, merchants display a single standardised code. The central bank's 2025 payments report describes it as one interoperable QR code that lets customers pay across different service providers.

"Merchants don't care what sits behind the code," Bozukov observes. "They care that it works for every customer who walks in. A shared standard removes the question of which provider someone uses, and that matters more than any feature you could add on top."

A year of rapid growth

The 2025 figures show how quickly acceptance has spread. Merchants accepting digital payments rose from 1.33 million in 2024 to 2.79 million in 2025, and the number of providers participating in the standard climbed from 15 to 27.

Payments to businesses grew with them. The report records more than 2.2 billion person-to-business transactions during 2025, worth TZS 37.5 trillion (Tanzanian shillings), with volumes up 30% on the year before. The report places these under mobile payment use cases, and the hardware count helps explain why. With 11,803 merchant point-of-sale terminals in the country, acceptance runs through phones rather than dedicated machines.

Tried once, used rarely

A merchant who can take a digital payment still needs customers who choose to make one. The FinScope Tanzania 2023 survey found that 13% of adults had ever paid a merchant using a merchant pay number, while 3% had done so in the past month. QR code use registered at just 1%. The survey's own heading for that finding was blunt: there is a gap in converting trial into regular use of digital financial services for purchasing goods.

Those results predate the surge in merchant numbers, so they cannot say where usage stands today. What they do show is where the hard work lies. 

Bozukov sees the gap as a question of routine. "Someone pays by phone once because a shop suggests it," he explains. "Whether they do it again depends on what happens next. Was it quick? Did the trader seem happy to take it? Was there any reason to choose it over a note in their pocket? Repeat use is the real product."

What makes a payment habit stick

Several conditions tend to decide whether a first payment becomes a regular one.

Merchant pricing has to be predictable. A trader who cannot easily tell what an incoming payment will cost has every reason to prefer cash. The central bank notes that the standard is intended to help reduce merchant costs, and keeping those costs clear matters as much as keeping them low.

Links between providers have to be reliable. A single code is only as good as the connections behind it, and a payment that stalls between two providers can undo a customer's confidence.

Sign-up has to be simple for very small traders. A kiosk owner or market vendor needs to start accepting payments without paperwork that eats into a day's trading.

Finally, people need everyday reasons to reach for the phone. Paying for a bus fare, a bag of rice or a phone top-up digitally has to feel easier than counting out notes.

Competing on experience

With a shared acceptance standard in place, the advantage of running a closed network has largely gone. What remains is a contest over which services merchants prefer and which ones customers keep using.

As Ivo Bozukov puts it: "When every provider can be paid through the same code, being the one whose sticker is on the wall stops being worth anything. What is left to compete on is the experience: pricing a trader can predict, payments that do not stall between providers, and a customer who reaches for the phone again next week without thinking about it."