How Secure QR code technology can help in the COVID-19 triggered e-invoice boom

Over the last year, Covid-19 has brought about a monumental change in the way businesses are conducted globally. In a recent piece titled - How COVID-19 triggered the digital and e-commerce turning point, UNCTAD said, “In years to come, we will look back at 2020 as the moment that changed everything. Nowhere else has unprecedented and unforeseen growth occurred as in the digital and e-commerce sectors, which have boomed amid the COVID-19 crisis.”

Figure 1 https://unctad.org/news/how-covid-19-triggered-digital-and-e-commerce-turning-point

This e-commerce inflexion point has brought about the focus directly into e-invoicing, making it a critical pillar for businesses and commerce. The increased e-commerce has made it essential to have a secure and trustworthy e-invoicing mechanism that provides sustained and scalable growth while adhering to the regulatory directives.

Yet, businesses worldwide don’t have to make high-cost investments into technologies such as Electronic Data Interchange and blockchain for this purpose. This is where secure QR code technology offers a strategic shift by pivoting the solution towards security, cost-efficiency, quick & easy implementation, and scalability. E-invoicing with secure QR makes it an ideal choice in times of COVID-19 by delivering blockchain level of security and yet providing significant benefits of a tried and tested commercial technology which brings effectiveness and efficiency with tighter cost structures.

What is it critical to have e-invoicing with a secure QR code?

As businesses optimise key processes, such as purchasing, sales and production, multiple challenges have to be dealt with in the current environment. With work from home becoming a norm, IT teams, finance and accounting teams, and supply chain staff conduct business processes remotely, including generating e-invoices instead of physical invoices which are delivered directly to the customer through channels such as email etc. This needs the invoice to be generated so that it is tamper-proof and can be easily validated on receipt. This is made possible with Secure QR codes that capture the information at the time of generation and seal it with the private key of the issuer. All that is needed is the corresponding public key to validate the data—this helps to maintain the authenticity of the invoice from generation to the end customer.

How is it done ? How does it work ?

Qryptal Secure QR code comes with a ready to implement plug-and-play installation that works both on-premise and through the cloud. Qryptal’s secure QR code generation system works with an existing ERP system (of invoice generation) and can be easily integrated to be operational in days. The vendors can now send secure e-invoices with QR codes on them to provide the highest level of security and authentication. These are the steps involved

1. The invoice issuer will generate all invoices with a secure QR code which will capture the invoice details, including the bank account information if necessary.

2. This high security, tamperproof QR code can only be generated by the authorised invoice issuer. Since this QR code is machine-readable, the information inside can then be cross-checked using a smartphone app or even online using web validation tools.

3. Each QR code is unique for every invoice of a product or service. The technology can be easily integrated with the existing infrastructure and can handle the necessary processing volumes.

4. The issuer will convey to their customers that they need to scan the QR code and verify the details of the invoice, and only then proceed with making the payment. The information inside the secure QR code is tamper-proof and can be trusted; anything outside may be subject to manipulation or tampering.

5. For validation, only the corresponding public key is needed (made a part of the smartphone app or the web validation tools), and hence this is a scalable system that can deal with millions of invoices.

Sample E-Invoice with Secure QR Code

Qryptal Secure QR code is privacy-friendly with no dependency on databases and no sharing of customer sensitive information. We encourage you to sign up for a trial account to see how this can work for you.

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