KZ FOSSBhutan,
This is a prelim RFI for a FOSS Fintech meetup, focussed on QR
payments. After a wild goose chase involving no open documentation from
the RMA, I discovered purely by chance that the QR encoding on Bhutan QR
and Singapore's PayNow use the same prefix - and this led me to the
emvco QR code specificiations [1].
Further digging got me finally to the RMA one-liner about EmvCo spec
compliance. [2]
Even NPCI has compatiblity via its "Bharat QR" [3]
So what's the relevance with FOSS ?
As with every "infrastructure" project, FOSS is the silent enabler - the
EMVCO spec seems to have several FOSS experiments and deployments
ongoing [4]
I have also noticed that there are PoS solutions in Bhutan that are
quietly implementing QR generation, for eg: with each solution rolling
its own code - this is wasteful, and not a useful business model moat.
It would be in the interest of the Bhutan fintech industry to come
together and support a small subset of well documented and rigourously
tested FOSS implementations of this spec, so that young entrepreneurs
don't have to waste time re-inventing the wheel and focus on their
business models and application related tasks, and existing players can
have assurance that their codebases are high quality and bring down
total cost of ownership.
If you are interested in this idea, please reply me privately, forward
this email to people who might be interested, or signpost me - I am
aiming to have a preliminary meetup where we can sit down and identify
high quality projects using emvco spec, and then shortlist a few that we
can then figure out how to modify to be Bhutan QR compatible.
I'm aiming to have this meeting in July, 2025, before the South Asian
Network Operators Group meetup - this will bring a global Tech community
into Thimphu ( please see their announcments and calls for participation
on the BTNog Mailing lists).
Also, please tell your friends to "unspam" email from FOSSBhutan mailing
lists, because this is causing the big email monopoly gmail to send our
emails to the spam boxes of other gmail users too. Ideally, please just
stop using gmail and find a more FOSS friendly mail provider.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Best Wishes,
Math
[1] https://www.w3.org/2020/Talks/emvco-qr-20201021.pdf
[2] https://www.rma.org.bt/media/Laws_By_Laws/Guidelines%20for%20Bhutan%20QR%20…
[3] https://fasterpaymentscouncil.org/userfiles/2080/files/QR%20Code%20White%20…
[4] https://github.com/search?q=emvco&type=repositories
