Fonepay QR for Merchants: A Complete Guide
Walk into almost any shop in Nepal and you will see the same green Fonepay QR sticker taped to the counter. Fonepay is not a wallet you top up - it is the interbank QR network that lets a customer pay you straight from their banking or wallet app into your bank account. That single difference changes how you reconcile it, and this guide walks through the whole flow.
Static QR vs. dynamic QR
There are two kinds of Fonepay QR, and the reconciliation story is different for each.
- Static QR - the printed sticker on your counter. It encodes only your merchant identity, not an amount. The customer scans, types the amount themselves, and pays. One QR handles every sale, every day.
- Dynamic QR - generated per transaction, usually on a screen or printed slip, with the amount already baked in. The customer cannot mistype, and the payment carries a reference your system generated.
Static QR is effortless to deploy but harder to reconcile - because the amount comes from the customer, not your system, there is no order reference tying the payment to a specific sale. Dynamic QR costs a little integration effort but gives you a clean, matchable reference on every rupee.
If you run a counter with a point-of-sale system, dynamic QR is worth the setup. The reference it carries turns reconciliation from detective work into a lookup.
How the money lands in your bank
This is the crucial mental model. Unlike a wallet, Fonepay does not hold your money in a pooled balance that you later sweep. The payment routes over the interbank network and is credited toward the bank account linked to your merchant profile.
That means your reconciliation anchor is the bank statement, not a wallet report. Fonepay credits typically arrive as bank entries with a recognisable narration, often batched by settlement cycle depending on your acquiring bank. So the two sources you reconcile are:
- The Fonepay business app / merchant report - the list of QR payments received, with timestamps, amounts, and references.
- The bank statement - where the money actually settles.
Do not assume every QR payment appears as an individual bank line. Depending on your bank and settlement cycle, multiple QR payments may be batched into a single credit - net of any network or bank charge. Matching one-to-one will leave you with false residuals.
The Fonepay business app
Merchants get a Fonepay business app that shows payments in near real time - useful at the counter to confirm a customer actually paid before handing over goods. It also serves as your transaction log: the record of what was received, which you later reconcile against the bank.
Treat the app as the gross ledger and the bank statement as the settled ledger. The job is to prove that a set of app-recorded payments, minus any charges, equals the bank credits. When they sum, you are reconciled. When they do not, you have a residual to explain - a payment the customer swears they made, a batch that split across two days, or a charge you did not model.
Reconciling QR by bank statement
Because Fonepay settles to the bank, reconciliation follows the same discipline as any bank statement reconciliation in Nepal:
- Pull the Fonepay report for the period - every QR payment received.
- Pull the bank statement for the same period.
- Group the payments the way the bank batched them, subtract charges, and match each group to a credit.
- Anything unmatched is a question: a timing split, a batching quirk, or a genuinely missing payment.
Static QR makes step three harder because there is no per-order reference - you are matching on amount and timestamp, which is fine until two customers pay the same amount minutes apart. Dynamic QR removes that ambiguity entirely.
The single biggest Fonepay reconciliation win is getting references onto payments. If you can move even your high-value sales to dynamic QR, you cut the ambiguous-match problem down to the small change.
Common gotchas
- Wrong amounts on static QR. Customers occasionally type the wrong figure. The payment succeeds; your books show a mismatch against the order. Catch these at the counter using the business app before the customer leaves.
- Same-amount collisions. Two identical amounts close together are impossible to tell apart without a reference. This is the core weakness of static QR reconciliation.
- Batching surprises. Settlement batching depends on your bank. Learn your bank's cycle so you know whether to expect per-payment or grouped credits.
- Charges you did not budget for. Network or bank charges may reduce the credited amount. Model them, or every settlement will show a small unexplained residual.
Fonepay operates within the interbank framework overseen by Nepal Rastra Bank; the payments regulations are published at nrb.org.np if you want the underlying rules.
VAT and record-keeping
A QR sale is still a sale, and the fact that money arrived by scan rather than cash does not change your tax position. Keep the Fonepay reports as primary evidence; the totals you report should tie back to the bank credits they produced. Because Fonepay lands directly in the bank, this rail actually makes your deposit trail cleaner than a wallet - provided you can attribute each credit to the right batch of QR payments. That attribution is the whole reconciliation task, and it is worth doing daily rather than at month end, when timing splits and same-amount collisions are far harder to unpick from memory.
Where RakamHQ fits
RakamHQ ingests your Fonepay report and your bank statement, learns how your bank batches QR credits, subtracts charges, and matches every payment to the settlement that carried it - flagging the same-amount collisions and timing splits instead of guessing. You get a proven daily close where every QR rupee traces back to a bank credit, without the counter-by-counter detective work.
Frequently asked
What is the difference between Fonepay static and dynamic QR?
Static QR is the printed counter sticker with no amount, so the customer types it and there is no order reference. Dynamic QR is generated per transaction with the amount and a reference baked in, making it far easier to reconcile.
Where does Fonepay money land?
Fonepay routes over the interbank network and credits your linked bank account. It does not hold funds in a pooled wallet, so your reconciliation anchor is the bank statement.
Does every Fonepay QR payment appear as its own bank line?
Not necessarily. Depending on your bank and settlement cycle, multiple QR payments may be batched into one credit net of charges, so one-to-one matching can create false residuals.
Why is static QR harder to reconcile?
Static QR carries no per-order reference, so payments are matched on amount and timing alone, which fails when two customers pay the same amount close together.
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