QR PAYMENTS AS A TOOL FOR EXPANDING THE CASHLESS ECONOMY AND FINANCIAL INCLUSION

This thesis examines QR-code payments as a low-cost acceptance technology for expanding the cashless economy and financial inclusion, with a focus on Uzbekistan's unified national QR code (UzQR), which all trade and service businesses have been required to accept since 1 July 2026. Drawing on data of the Central Bank of Uzbekistan (CBU), market studies and the experience of Indonesia (QRIS), Brazil (Pix) and India (UPI), it shows that Uzbekistan enters the QR stage with a high level of card-based payments, about 72% of GDP in 2025, but with a stagnant network of about 430 thousand POS terminals and weak merchant-side adoption: more than one-third of MSMEs lack a bank account and less than 30% of their sales are electronic. The thesis argues that QR payments can close this merchant-side gap only if acceptance is cheaper than the informal alternatives, payments settle to business accounts, and QR transaction data are used for fiscal simplification and credit, and it proposes policy measures for the next stage of the UzQR rollout.