The Impact of Quick Response Code Indonesian Standard (Qris) on MSME Sales Performance in Indonesia

Abstract

The Quick Response Code Indonesian Standard (QRIS), launched by Bank Indonesia as the national QR-code payment standard and made mandatory from January 2020, has achieved extraordinary adoption, with more than 30 million registered MSME merchants and 2.9 billion transactions recorded in 2023. Despite this growth, empirical evidence on the specific commercial impact of QRIS adoption on MSME sales performance remains limited. This study analyses the impact of QRIS adoption on the sales performance of Indonesian MSMEs, with transaction frequency as a mediating variable. Using a quantitative descriptive-causal design, primary data were collected through a structured questionnaire from 120 valid MSME respondents who had been actively using QRIS for at least three months, and analysed using path analysis and the Sobel test. The results show that QRIS adoption has a positive and significant effect on transaction frequency (a₁ = 0.7053, p < 0.001, R² = 0.4975), and that transaction frequency has a positive and significant effect on sales performance (b₂ = 0.5378, p < 0.001). The Sobel test confirms a significant indirect effect of QRIS adoption on sales performance through transaction frequency (indirect effect = 0.3793, z = 6.61, p < 0.001), indicating partial mediation. The combined model explains 75.67% of the variance in sales performance. These findings confirm that QRIS adoption generates commercial value for Indonesian MSMEs through two concurrent mechanisms: directly, by expanding customer reach and improving satisfaction, and indirectly, by increasing the frequency of completed transactions, which drives revenue and sales volume.