Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL) has zeroed in on seven bidders for supplying 10 lakh point-of-sale (PoS) machines. Ingenico, Verifone, MSwipe and Ezetap, which are the largest players globally and locally, are emerging as frontrunners. TVS Electronics and Zivah are among the other bidders.
Official sources said the bid evaluation process is still on and the PSU is yet to officially announce the results.
The company is procuring the machines through ‘the bucket-fill’ approach — the bidders first commit to offer a PoS machine at the lowest price possible. All the other bidders are then asked to offer the number of machines they can supply at the lowest price quoted. Those companies that cannot match the price are automatically eliminated from the process.
EESL is in talks with SBI and ICICI for using the PoS machines to encourage cashless transactions. Through this tender, EESL will procure 7 lakh mobile machines and the remaining 3 lakh will be regular (fixed) ones. EESL estimates that a regular PoS machine currently costs ₹7,000, while a mobile PoS machine costs ₹3,000.
India currently has 14 lakh PoS machines. Of these, only 50,000 are mobile PoS machines. EESL’s success in this tender would mean practically doubling the number of PoS machines in the country.