If you want to scan and pay, use your payment app
Start here, because it is what most people searching for a UPI QR scanner actually want.
Paying a UPI QR requires the scan and the payment to happen inside one certified app, so that your UPI PIN is entered in a secure environment. Open GPay, PhonePe, Paytm, BHIM, Amazon Pay, or your bank's own app, and use the scan button inside it. On most Android phones the camera app also detects UPI QRs and offers to hand off to a payment app.
No website can complete a UPI payment. Any site that offers to is either misinformed or attempting to harvest your details. That is not a limitation of this website in particular. It is how UPI is designed, and it is a good design.
What a browser based reader is for
Reading a QR and paying a QR are different jobs. Reading is genuinely useful when the QR is an image rather than something in front of your camera:
- A QR someone sent you on WhatsApp, and you want to see who it pays before you transfer.
- A QR in an invoice PDF from a supplier, where the amount is large enough to be worth a check.
- Your own QR, before it goes to a printer, so you find a mistake while it is still cheap.
- A QR you already scanned that behaved oddly, and you want to know what was actually in it.
That is what the UPI QR checker does. Upload the image and it decodes in your browser, showing the UPI ID, the stored name, whether an amount is locked in, and anything unusual. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored.
Why we do not offer a camera scanner here
A web page can open your camera, and a page that decoded a QR from a live camera feed would be simple enough to build. We have not, for two reasons.
The first is that it would be useless at the moment it appeared most useful. Reading the QR at a counter still leaves you needing your payment app to pay it, so a camera scanner adds a step rather than removing one.
The second is that a web page asking for camera access on a payments site trains exactly the wrong instinct. The habit worth having is that UPI payments happen in UPI apps.
Reading a QR that will not scan
If a QR refuses to scan anywhere, the code itself is usually the problem rather than your phone.
- Low contrast between the QR and its background, or a light QR on a dark surface.
- A centre logo covering too much of the pattern.
- Printing too small. Around 2 cm across is the practical floor for a phone at arm's length, and a counter sign should be much larger.
- Glare from lamination or glass, or a crease across the pattern.
- Ink that has faded, or a QR stretched out of square when it was resized.
If you are making the QR, the generator on this site checks each design by decoding it again before you download it, and refuses styles that fail. For printing, the print layouts are already sized correctly.