Pine Labs, a merchant commerce platform, will look to deploy at least 1 lakh Android PoS terminals in FY21, said Kush Mehra, Chief Business Officer. It will also look to add at least 2 lakh small and medium business (SMB) touchpoints for PoS deployments.

In the last nine months since launch, Pine Labs has already reached a milestone of 50,000-plus ‘Plutus Smart’ Android PoS terminals, Mehra told BusinessLine .

Undergoes change

Now, an Android Point-of-Sale terminal is an all-in-one platform that will help merchants accept payments across multiple payment modes; help merchants run multiple services, which was earlier run independently. For instance, when a customer buys a refrigerator at a retail store, he can get the EMI catalogue (EMI offers across banks) on the Android PoS at the store itself.

Plutus Smart users include merchants across diverse industries, including hospitality, apparel and lifestyle, entertainment, education, healthcare and automobile. Additionally, multiple State Traffic Police departments have signed up to empower their personnel with Plutus Smart terminals, said Mehra.

“We are transforming the market from traditional PoS to Android PoS. Our expectation was that we would do 20,000 Android PoS in the first year after launch. However, in the nine months since we have gone live with Plutus Smart (Android POS), we have already deployed 50,000-plus Android PoS. Different retailers are taking different value out of Android PoS,” he said.

With Android PoS, customer experience has increased. All additional services that Pine Labs used to give separately earlier will now be given through Android PoS, and the presentation and delivery is far more seamless, he added.

When asked about the impact of the government move to introduce ‘Zero MDR’ for Rupay debit cards, Mehra said it would have a positive impact for the digital payments ecosystem in the long term.

“It is now business as usual for us. Companies like us who have not built our model on Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) see some benefits over a period of time,” he said.

The move is with a positive intention that they (government) want to grow the acceptance touchpoints for digital payments. “However, the way it has been done, I don’t think it will benefit small businesses. If you want to grow the payment universe, definitely make MDR competitive and lower transaction fee but not zero. Look at south-east Asia, MDR levels are definitely capped. But keep in mind they are not zero. Growing digital payments through aero economics is not the right way,” he said.

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