I've figured this out. The problem wasn't in fact due to image files pixel alpha. That works just fine. It had to do with the QQuickView not being transparent. What I am doing is displaying a QQuickView as a borderless window to be used as a popup dialog and I want to see through to the background, where there are no objects in the qml file. (Think of a pop up dialog with rounded corners).
Here's what I'm doing:
QQuickView view;
// don't display an icon in the task bar
// no border on the window
view.setFlags(Qt::SubWindow | Qt::FramelessWindowHint);
// make the view transparent so that the edges of the window,
// where there is no image, show through to the background
QSurfaceFormat surfaceFormat;
surfaceFormat.setAlphaBufferSize(8);
view.setFormat(surfaceFormat);
view.setClearBeforeRendering(true);
view.setColor(QColor(Qt::transparent));
// load qml file and display
view.setSource(file.qml);
view.show();