Taking PromptPay payments in a small shop
A printed QR code on the counter is the cheapest payment terminal there is: no device, no monthly fee, no card reader. What it costs instead is attention, because the code on the wall is the one thing a customer has to trust, and the slip they show you is the one thing you have to check.
Personal code or business code
Many small shops start with the owner's personal PromptPay code, and for a stall that is often the end of the story. The moment there is bookkeeping, a payroll or a tax filing, mixing shop income with personal transfers becomes a monthly chore that is entirely avoidable.
A business identifier keeps the two apart from the beginning. It is also what a customer expects to see on a receipt, and it means the person doing your accounts does not have to ask which transfers were dinner and which were the shop.
The code on the counter
A static code, printed and laminated, with the shop's logo in the middle. Static because the customer types the amount, which means one sign covers everything you sell. Laminated because a counter is a wet, greasy place and a scratched code eventually stops scanning.
Swapped stickers are a known trick elsewhere, and the defence is that the code looks like your shop: the same logo as the sign, so a replacement that does not match is obvious to you and to a regular customer.
The thirty seconds that prevent the loss
A customer shows you a slip on their phone. The slip is an image, and the transfer is instant, so there is no reason to accept the picture instead of the money: check the account, then hand over the goods.
On a busy day that is exactly the step people skip, which is why the whole trade in edited and reused slips exists. Keeping the order (confirm, then deliver) costs nothing and is the only check that works against all of it.
Keeping the day in order
Thirty transfers a day with no record is a shop whose takings live in a notification list. At the end of the month, reconciling that against anything is a lost evening.
Filing each payment as it happens turns it into a ledger: what came in, from whom, for what. SlipDee reads the slips that are already in the phone and files them, and the spending view adds up the month without anybody typing a number into a spreadsheet.
Tipping and change
QR payment removes the change drawer, which is pleasant until a customer wants to pay 95 baht and types 100. The money has arrived and you owe five baht, in cash, from a till that no longer holds any.
Keep a small amount of cash for exactly that, and for the customer whose phone has no signal. Cash-free works nine times out of ten; the tenth is the one that annoys people enough to remember.
Checklist
- Decide whether this is a personal or a business code before printing anything.
- Print the code with your own logo in the middle and laminate it.
- Put it where a phone camera can reach it without the customer leaning over the counter.
- Confirm payments in your own account before handing over goods.
- File each payment the same day, so the month adds up by itself.
- Keep a little cash for change and for phones with no signal.
Make your own PromptPay QR
Your code with your photo on it, so friends can see who they are paying. Free, in the browser, and it works with every Thai bank.
Open SlipDeeFrequently asked questions
Do I need a merchant account to take QR payments?
- A personal PromptPay code can receive money, and plenty of stalls use one. A merchant arrangement brings its own terms and its own reporting, and it is what a bank will point a registered business towards.
Should the code show an amount?
- Not for a shop. A static code without an amount covers every sale; a dynamic code is for one specific payment, like an invoice.
What if a customer shows a slip and the money never arrives?
- Then it was not paid, and the slip was a claim. This is the reason for confirming in your own account first; once the goods are gone, you are asking a stranger for a favour.
Can two shops share one code?
- Technically yes, and it is a bookkeeping disaster. One code per account, one account per set of books.
How do I give a receipt?
- The slip belongs to the payment, not to the sale, so a business still issues its own receipt. For tax purposes that distinction matters more than the payment method does.
