How digital payments in India are redefining the traditional PoS

Digital payments in India have taken off in a big way especially after the 2016 bank note demonetization. The young and aspirational middle class of the country is now fueling the adoption of digital payments and helping India transform into a less-cash economy. In fact, by 2025, India could end up creating a digital economy of somewhere between $800 billion to $1 trillion (or value equivalent to 18 to 23 percent of the country's nominal GDP), as per the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).¹

The Digital India program, a flagship initiative of the incumbent government has also been a catalyst for digital payments adoption in India. The program has a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. "Faceless, Paperless, Cashless" is one of the stated objectives of Digital India. The advent of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) was another step in the right direction as it helped create the much-needed interoperability between multiple players e.g. banks, consumers, mobile wallet and fintech companies.

Amid such an environment of increasing government support, progressive regulatory policies and a huge domestic population fueling the adoption of digital payments in India, merchants who embrace the best of what fintech has to offer will end up growing their business in the years to come. A good example here is how at Pine Labs we are helping our merchant partners reimagine the point of sale (PoS) and make the most of the rising acceptance of digital payments in India.

While the arrival of the PoS machine was a gamechanger for offline merchants and helped them accept multiple forms of digital payments, today's smart Android PoS terminals are the next big innovation as they are equipped to handle more than just digital payments. Using these smart PoS solutions, merchants can now get insights on their loyal customers, capture their feedback, offer them the convenience of EMI purchases and a lot more.

The fact that these new-age Android PoS devices are also handling UPI payments with ease is another advantage for merchants aiming for business growth. UPI transaction volumes have significantly increased from Rs 31 million crore in August 2016 to Rs 1.89 trillion in October 2019² establishes the importance of enabling UPI in the PoS payment acceptance devices.

No wonder the PoS ecosystem in India is continuously growing and as per RBI's November 2019 data³, the total amount of credit card transactions via PoS were 601 billion and the number of debit card transactions were 576 billion. We are excited that we are the forefront of driving this digital transformation in India. If you'd like to redefine the traditional point of sale and bring it in line with the need of today's tech savvy consumers, do reach out to us and we will help you do just that.

¹ India's Trillion Dollar Digital Opportunity report by MeitY

² Financial Express

³ Reserve Bank of India