Integration and creation of PAY by square codes

You have probably already come across the QR code that you will find on most invoices from providers of various services such as heat, gas, electricity, garbage collection or municipal taxes. In Slovakia, the PAY by square solution was adopted in 2013 as a standard for placing payment details in QR codes. Since then, paying bills for common services has become much easier. People no longer have to manually insert payment data from an invoice into internet banking, but just take a picture of such a QR code with their smart device via their bank’s mobile app. The payment is then fast and accurate at the same time as there are no unnecessary mistakes when transcribing.

I, like most people, got used to it very quickly. On the other hand, I already expect the QR code for payment on the invoice in advance and I am always surprised if the code is not there. Right now, in the period of paying municipal waste fees as well as municipal taxes, I appreciate the most the quick payment of various invoices directly from the account via mobile banking, which saves unnecessary and laborious tapping of payment details into the mobile phone. Of course, such fast and efficient payment is only possible if the company issuing the invoice has implemented such a solution. Fortunately, I can state that more than half of the invoices I deal with already have this problem solved.

However, there are still many companies that do not yet provide this commonplace. When asked how “PAY by square” codes can be created or decoded in the enterprise, the answer is very simple. The first option is to use a local invoicing tool that already has such codes integrated in it.

However, information systems for large enterprises do not have the “PAY by square” solution as standard, as it is a purely Slovak standard. That is why ORIWIN, s.r.o. in cooperation with the creator of the ADELANTE standard created a common solution for enterprises that use the information system from SAP.

For the last almost 10 years we have helped many companies in Slovakia to add such QR codes to their invoices. Today we see that the topic of “by square” codes is reviving again, and other companies, including the state, want to make paying their invoices as convenient as possible for people. Because we now have the solution ready as a “package”, we can integrate such a solution within a few hours, often within a week of ordering.

For companies that use multiple information systems or want to generate a large number of codes, it is most appropriate to make the solution using an enterprise integration platform, with the proviso that the provision of this service will be uniform for all internal information systems.

So how do we make your data the right data that a mobile banking app can read?

For creating “by square” codes, the easiest way is to use the original “by square” library. We embed this library into the customer’s technical infrastructure, or we can place it directly into the customer’s cloud environment. The QR code according to the “by square” standard can then be easily added to any form.

However, it is also possible to create a nice synchronous integration scenario for QR code creation. Typically, we create an enterprise web service that has the information needed to create a payment order as input. This is typically information such as IBAN, amount, due date, constant or variable symbol, payment text, etc. The output of the service is then a binary encoded data that you just need to insert into the QR code generator. The conversion provided by this web service is very simple, efficient and, above all, secure. In addition, if we place such a web service in the cloud, one service can be available quickly, reliably and securely for the entire company. For large companies with thousands of customers, an enterprise service with a single call is not very suitable, as it would work very slowly and inefficiently. In this case, we would recommend making a synchronous or asynchronous web service that would have the ability to generate QR codes for multiple payment orders at once. Through such a mechanism it is possible to generate a large number of “by square” codes and moreover very quickly.

If you are already using the SAP Integration Suite , or alternatively SAP Cloud API Management in your enterprise today, the service created “by square” in the enterprise Cloud can be easily accessible for all enterprise applications.

If you also want to simplify and make your services more attractive for your customers, please contact us. We will gladly help you :-).