An Assessment of QR Code as a User Interface Enabler for Mobile Payment Apps on Smartphones

Mobile enabled payment technologies have seen an upsurge with advancement in smartphone technology. Several companies, including Google, Paypal, Amazon, Facebook have launched mobile payment solutions. Easy to adopt user interfaces play a pivotal role in wider adoption of such solutions. Typically, existing mobile payment solutions are designed for the user to type in the details of a transaction, like recipient id, amount, authorization code. Use of a pictorial mode to capture the transaction information can make the user interaction easier and faster during a transaction. We use a popular pictorial encoding format, called Quick-Response (QR) code, to auto-fill necessary details during a transaction, thus relieving the user from typing in the details. In this study using 48 participants from different literacy levels, we have compared the use of standard typing based system against inputs using pictorial format for enabling mobile payments. Our study indicates the benefits of QR code in designing UIs for mobile payment applications.