Taobao, the C2C e-commerce platform from Alibaba this weekend circulated a memo to all vendors with the announcement of QR codes linking to external websites will no longer be allowed, as this process is being used to circumvent normal transaction process. No images with external-links on QR codes be uploaded now; and already uploaded ones need to be removed within a month.
All this is being done to ensure consumer protection from advertising and fraud by ensuring all transactions are carried out on Taobao’s secure payment platform. This might be ahainst WeChat from Tencent which is very QR code-friendly and which has recently added its own mobile payment system.
Certainity of fraud from external QR might seem reasonable, it’s can also be assumed that Taobao did this to curb competition.