Several parts combine into one character.

The traditional 拂 is a phonetic-semantic compound: 扌 (hand) plus 弗 (negation / brushing off). The original meaning was concrete and physical — "to brush off, to flick away with the hand." Then something interesting happened only in Japan: the metaphor of "brushing money out of one's hand" became the standard verb for "to pay." Japan simplified the character to 払, while China and Korea kept the original 拂 strictly in its "brush off" meaning and use entirely different characters (付/支付) for payment.

Korean reading "bul." Largely archaic now: 拂拭 (bulsik, "to brush and wipe clean"), 拂去 (bulgeo, to brush away). The old Sino-Korean compound 支拂 (jibul, payment) survives in formal financial writing but everyday Korean uses 지불 — which is the same Hanja read aloud — in legal/banking contexts only. Conversational Korean prefers (naeda, "to put out") for everyday paying.

Mandarin fú, 2nd tone. Modern Chinese restricts 拂 strictly to its "brush off" sense: 拂尘 (fúchén, to dust off), 吹拂 (chuīfú, to blow gently). For "to pay," Chinese uses an entirely different character — 付 (fù), as in 付钱 (fùqián, pay money), 支付 (zhīfù, payment), 付款 (fùkuǎn, to make payment). A Chinese speaker reading Japanese 払う would parse it as "brush off / dust" and miss the financial meaning completely.

Japanese is where 払 lives most actively. The on-reading フツ (futsu) is rare; the kun-reading はらう (harau, "to pay / brush away / drive off") dominates: お金を払う (okane o harau, "to pay money") is one of the first sentences any Japanese learner masters. Compound forms read with rendaku ばらい: 月払い (tsukibarai, monthly payment), 後払い (atobarai, deferred payment), 支払い (shiharai, payment). 払う also retains the original "drive away" sense — 厄を払う (yaku o harau, to drive away misfortune) — bridging finance back to its origins.

Memory aid: a hand (扌) flicking something out — Japanese saw money leaving the hand and called it "paying."

In Japan·払う = to pay (everyday word) / brush off

In China·拂 = to brush off only; "pay" is 付 (fù), not 拂