The solution addresses the needs of small businesses, especially during these challenging times of Covid-19, the joint release from MasterCard, Axis Bank and Worldline said.

Keeping small merchants in focus, MasterCard, Axis Bank and Worldline on Thursday launched payments platform —soft point of sale (POS) — which will enable kirana stores to do away with traditional POS and accept payments from customers with an application on their mobile phones.

This platform comes at a time when Mukesh Ambani-led JioMart has planned an easier payment system for kirana stores after an investment of `43,574 crore from Facebook. Sanjeev Moghe, head-cards & payments, Axis Bank, said, “We have been continuously working on partnership-led models & digital solutions for the merchant community, to help them lower their cost of business.”

The solution addresses the needs of small businesses, especially during these challenging times of Covid-19, the joint release from MasterCard, Axis Bank and Worldline said. Vikas Saraogi, vice-president, head of acceptance, South Asia, Mastercard, “Given the current pandemic, an option of accepting cashless payments and the speed of transactions are paramount for small merchants across the country.”

The solution enables face-to-face payments with Bharat quick response (QR) and near field communications (NFC) payments, as well as remote payments for home deliveries via link-based payments. The application also allows banks to have complete visibility of a merchant’s transactions, making it easier for small merchants to get business loans. The solution is available as a white label solution to all banks and payment aggregators in the industry, the release further said. The application has unique features like ‘E-khata’ to store transactions, ‘online dukkan’ to create a catalogue of items and other business solutions.