Bakong White Paper 2026: In April 2026 the National Bank of Cambodia published its first comprehensive account of Bakong — the blockchain-based national payment system now used by 8.5 million Cambodians. The 33-page white paper, “Modernizing Cambodia’s Payment Landscape,” reveals Bakong processed the equivalent of 4.5x Cambodia’s GDP in 2025, connects 4.5 million KHQR acceptance points, and now has operational cross-border links with 8 countries. MoneyKH has read the full document.

NBC primary data suggests financial inclusion could reach 73% in 2026. All figures verified directly from the official white paper by MoneyKH Research Team.

What Is Bakong — And Why Does It Exist?

Bakong was built to solve three structural problems that held Cambodia’s economy back for decades.

The first was dollarization. From the late 1980s, the US dollar circulated as a hedge against political and monetary instability. By the time Bakong launched, the dollar still accounted for approximately 90% of bank deposits, loans, and transaction value — constraining the NBC’s ability to conduct independent monetary policy or respond to domestic economic shocks.

The second was a largely unbanked population. Only 3.7% of Cambodian adults held a formal financial account in 2011. Most wages, retail transactions, and remittances moved through cash and informal channels. Rural communities had limited commercial incentive for banks to serve them, and physical distance from branches discouraged formal-sector participation.

The third was a fragmented payment landscape. By the late 2010s, Cambodia hosted a growing number of banks and payment service providers, but customers of one institution could not easily transact with those of another. Interbank clearing ran on a twice-daily batch cycle. Payment service providers were excluded from clearinghouse access. Merchants displayed multiple competing QR codes side by side because no single standard existed.

Bakong, launched in October 2020 in partnership with Japanese technology firm SORAMITSU, was designed to address all three simultaneously.

How Bakong Actually Works — The Three-Layer Architecture

The white paper describes Bakong as a three-tier system, and understanding it explains why it works where other attempts at payment modernisation have failed.

At the foundation sits Hyperledger Iroha — an open-source permissioned distributed ledger framework hosted by the Linux Foundation. Every transaction is recorded here. The ledger is immutable, replicated across multiple NBC-operated nodes, and processes over 2,000 transactions per second with end-to-end settlement typically completed in under five seconds.

Above it sits the Bakong Core — operated by the NBC. It manages user accounts, validates transactions, exposes APIs to participating institutions, and writes settled transactions to the ledger. This is the orchestration layer.

At the top sit participating institutions — commercial banks, MFIs, and payment service providers including ABA Bank, Wing Bank, ACLEDA, FTB, and AMK — each connecting through their own payment gateway. End users interact with Bakong through their institution’s familiar app, not directly with the system itself.

The critical design insight: messaging and the movement of funds occur in a single operation. There is no separate clearing step. Settlement is instant, irrevocable, and final — which is what eliminates interbank settlement risk and allows every licensed institution, regardless of size, to participate on equal terms.

KHQR — The Standard That Made It Work

KHQR, launched in July 2022, is the unified QR standard built on top of Bakong. It is EMV-compliant — the same global technical specification used by Singapore’s PayNow and Thailand’s PromptPay — which is what enables cross-border interoperability without bilateral technology negotiations.

Before KHQR, each bank had begun issuing its own QR code, creating a new fragmentation problem at the merchant level: shopkeepers displayed multiple codes side by side. KHQR resolved this by establishing a single format that every participating app can read and process. A merchant displays one code. A customer pays with whichever app they prefer.

Crucially: KHQR is free of charge for both users and merchants. Merchants receive payment in full. This is fundamentally different from card payment infrastructure which deducts a merchant fee from every transaction. The result is a virtuous circle — merchant demand pulls in banks, and bank competition drives further KHQR adoption.

The De-Dollarization Strategy Embedded In the Architecture

One of the white paper’s most significant disclosures is how the NBC embedded de-dollarization into Bakong’s architecture through commercial incentives rather than regulatory mandate.

The mechanism is cross-border payments. Outbound cross-border transactions on Bakong can only be initiated from a riel account. Merchants who want to accept payments from tourists must likewise hold a riel account. For users and merchants who previously held only dollars, this creates a direct commercial incentive to open a riel account — with the reward being access to the entire cross-border customer base. The NBC has, in effect, made riel adoption a prerequisite for participation in Cambodia’s cross-border payment economy.

The results are visible. Between 2021 and 2025, riel transactions grew from a small minority to over half of all transactions by volume. Dollar transaction value remains dominant — but the direction is clear.

Cross-Border Reach — 8 Operational Links, 4 In Development

Bakong now has operational cross-border QR payment links with eight countries, with four further integrations in development. Cambodia formally joined the ASEAN Regional Payment Connectivity initiative in April 2025.

For Cambodians abroad — particularly the estimated 300,000+ in Malaysia and significant communities in South Korea — this means sending money home at zero cost by scanning a KHQR code from a local bank app is a genuine option today, not a future development.

Bakong Tourists — Cashless Travel Without a Cambodian Bank Account

The white paper details Bakong Tourists, the NBC’s extension of the system to international visitors. Registration requires only an email address. Wallets can be topped up with Visa or Mastercard, or with cash at partner banks. Balances are held in both USD and KHR with real-time conversion. Visitors can pay at over 4.5 million KHQR acceptance points across Cambodia — the same merchants that serve locals — by scanning a single QR code.

This is significant for Cambodia’s tourism sector. QR acceptance points (4.5 million) outnumber card POS terminals (42,000) by a ratio of more than 100:1. A tourist with a Bakong Tourists wallet has access to a payment network that card infrastructure cannot match.

Where Bakong Still Falls Short

The white paper is unusually candid about the system’s ongoing challenges.

What Bakong Makes Possible Next

MoneyKH Verdict

Source: National Bank of Cambodia, “Modernizing Cambodia’s Payment Landscape — Bakong White Paper,” April 2026. Full document available at nbc.gov.kh. All statistics cited directly from the official document.

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MoneyKH Research Team · July 2026 · Disclaimer →

MoneyKH

The MoneyKH Research Team comprises independent financial researchers, market analysts, and editorial professionals with direct on-ground knowledge of Cambodia’s banking, fintech, and financial services sector. All rates, fees, and product data published on MoneyKH are verified directly with each institution before publication. MoneyKH operates as an editorially independent platform with no affiliate partnerships — see our editorial policy for full disclosure.