Nepal's ATMs and card machines lose ground as QR payments reach 72m a month
Central bank data show QR payments up 77% in a year while ATM withdrawals, debit card use and card-terminal payments all fell. The country now has fewer cash machines than a year ago.
The way Nepalis pay is changing faster than the infrastructure built for it. In the month to mid-August 2026, Nepalis made 72.4m QR-code payments worth Rs 164.4bn (about $1.06bn), according to Nepal Rastra Bank's monthly payment systems indicators. A year earlier the figures were 40.9m payments worth Rs 100.7bn. The number of transactions rose 77%.
Almost every older channel moved the other way. ATM cash withdrawals fell 12% to 9.1m, and the amount withdrawn fell 16% to Rs 70.0bn. Debit card transactions fell 12% to 9.7m. Payments on card terminals in shops, known as point-of-sale or POS, fell 31% to 789,290, with their value down 38% to Rs 4.2bn.
Phones replace plastic
The money is moving to phones. Mobile banking transactions rose 25% to 78.7m in the month, and the number of mobile banking users reached 30.3m, up from 28.0m a year earlier, the central bank's data show. Wallet transactions, through providers such as eSewa and Khalti, rose 34% to 53.0m, and the number of wallets reached 28.0m.
Kantipur reported in March that banks in the Kathmandu metropolis were merging branches as ATM withdrawals declined, and that QR transactions had grown 76%, mobile banking 40% and wallet transactions about 22%.
The plumbing behind this has grown with it. The Retail Payment Switch, the national interoperable system run by Nepal Clearing House, handled Rs 1.2trn in transactions in the month of Asar and Rs 9.3trn over the 2025/26 fiscal year, ShareSansar reported. For the first time it processed more by value than cheque clearing.
The physical network is shrinking accordingly. The number of ATMs fell from 5,264 to 5,108 over the year to mid-August. The number of debit cards in issue barely moved, at about 13.7m, which suggests people are keeping their cards but using them less.
Part of the QR growth comes from abroad. Payments through cross-border QR links more than doubled to 317,332 in the month, worth Rs 842m. Much of that comes from Indian visitors, as our report on Indian tourists going cashless describes, but it is a small share of the total. The great bulk of the growth is Nepalis paying Nepalis.
Why cards are losing
Reach explains much of the shift. Card payments depend on terminals, of which there were roughly 50,000 in the country, while QR networks reach far more shops: Fonepay alone gave access to more than 1.8m merchants, The Kathmandu Post reported in January. QR payments also move money between accounts in real time from apps that 30m Nepalis already use.
Cash has not disappeared. Nepalis still withdrew Rs 70bn from ATMs in the month. The e-money held in wallets and similar accounts stood at Rs 12.9bn at the end of Saun. But the direction is clear, and it is changing how banks think about branches and machines.
What to watch
The payment data for Bhadra and Ashwin will cover the Dashain shopping season, when cash demand traditionally peaks. If QR volumes keep rising through the festival while ATM withdrawals fall, the case for banks to cut their networks of machines and branches will strengthen. The central bank has already set rules for how branches can be consolidated.
How this story was made: researched and written by The Standard’s desk with AI assistance, from the published reporting and official data credited below, and checked against those sources. Our standards.
