Oxigen enhances footprint with IOCL's Fuel Station Network

After the successful completion of a pilot run by IOCL (Indian Oil Corporation Ltd.) at 200 Fuel stations across India, using Oxigen's Flagship product, The Oxigen Micro ATM, Oxigen and IOCL today announced a strategic tie-up to deploy new Micro ATMs at IOCL's fuel station network, pan-India.

In May 2017, Oxigen, India's leading payment solutions provider, which is a national banking correspondent of the RBL Bank, had selected 200 IOCL retail outlets for a pilot financial inclusion project. These 200 IOCL-Oxigen Micro ATMs outlets have completed a transaction volume of over 30,000 with 60 million INR gross transaction value. With this strategic tie-up with IOCL, Oxigen is now aiming to deploy Micro ATMs at 10,000 IOCL retail outlets across the country, yielding 8-10 million transactions and a gross transaction value of a billion USD in the coming year.

Oxigen and IOCL outlets will provide branchless banking through PoS machines, where customers can avail banking services, make digital payments and recharge IOCL loyalty card accounts. People can pay using multiple transaction modes, including BHIM and Aadhaar Pay.

The Oxigen Micro ATM is used both, as a point of sale terminal for customers to pay for fuel and other purchases, and also as an ATM for cash withdrawal by customers using Aadhaar. It will enable a IOCL dealer to get new customers coming in for banking / recharge / bill payment - which is Oxigen's unique value proposition.

"We believe that there is an enormous business potential in digitising cash at fuel outlets in India. Eighty percent of the payments made at these outlets are in cash. The deployment of Micro ATM's will reduce the cost and risk of cash management for the dealer and at the same time customers and neighbourhood communities and highway travellers can avail this cash in circulation for branchless banking services. Oxigen's pilot project of installing 200 Micro ATM's at IOCL was a tremendous success and hence we plan to digitize the entire Fuel Station network through our state of the art payment solutions offered Oxigen," said Pramod Saxena, Founder and CMD, Oxigen Services.

Indian Oil's commitment to a less-cash economy: "Indian Oil is consciously working towards increasing cashless transactions by encouraging customers to pay by debit/credit cards, loyalty programs and mobile wallets.

The tie-up with Oxigen is yet another step towards implementing reliable digital payment system for our customers visiting our retail outlets across the country and to enable them to get the intended benefits."

"We are delighted to be partnering with Oxigen in this initiative that provides a technology-led solution, on the one hand to IOCL and its dealers, and on the other hand it provides neighbourhood branchless banking services to the common man without the large overhead of conventional ATMs. This will go a long way in promoting less-cash economy," said Sujatha Mohan, Head, Digital and New Initiatives, RBL Bank.

Oxigen Micro ATM is a multi-purpose POS terminal that enables a retailer to offer to their customers a variety of services viz. Aadhaar-based banking, acceptance of payment made via credit / debit card (Visa/ Mastercard/ RuPay) for purchasing goods, value-added services (recharges, bill payment, travel booking, Amazon gift cards), eKYC. The mode of payment can be cash or digital (cards, Aadhaar, BHIM, UPI, Bharat QR Code). It works off a 2G SIM and hence is suited to be deployed even on highways and rural areas.

Currently, apart from IOCL Fuel station network, Oxigen has deployed over 20,000 Oxigen Micro ATMs across the country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)