New Delhi: PhonePe, the payments arm of Flipkart, will introduce its bluetooth-enabled point of sale (PoS) devices across the country this year. The company aims to sell around 1 million units in top 20 cities including Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune by July, PhonePe business development head Pradeep Dodle said.
In October, the low-cost PoS device was introduced in Bengaluru on a pilot basis to facilitate digital payments at kirana stores, petrol pumps, food chains and other small merchants.
“There has been positive feedback from merchants, both in terms of the acceptability of digital payments and the utility of the PoS devices. Around 5,000 units have already been sold in Bengaluru within a few days,” Dodle said. The company claims this is the world’s cheapest PoS device.
“Currently, we are taking a very nominal refundable deposit from merchants i.e. Rs699. There is no rental model. We are only charging payment processing fee from merchants,” he said.
The device is designed like an electronic calculator to make it easy for use. To make payments, customers need to bring their smartphones close to the PoS device which will automatically display the bill amount on the PhonePe app. Since the device works on bluetooth, merchants don’t need an internet connection.
The merchant merely needs to calculate the amount and press the ‘pay’ button. Customers will choose from debit cards, credit cards, unified payments interface (UPI) or wallets and make the payment from their own phone app, added Dodle.
The company claims PhonePe is currently used at over 60,000 physical outlets.
Earlier this month, the company claimed to have processed over 1 million daily transactions worth over Rs100 crore every day in November. Also, the app has achieved a total payments volume (TPV) annual run rate of Rs40,000 crores within 14 months of its launch. The company is targeting to double this metric by March 2018.
PhonePe is Flipkart’s big bet in digital payments after several failed attempts. In October, Flipkart said it will invest $500 million in PhonePe to expand its payments arm. The commitment is in addition to the $75 million infused by Flipkart in PhonePe since it acquired the latter in April 2016.