Bangalore-based leading payments company, Innoviti Payment Solutions announced the market launch of its innovative Innoviti-POS card payment acceptance solution targeted at accelerating the adoption of POS-based digital payment acceptance amongst small town retailers. A multi-pronged distribution strategy has been piloted in 7 Tier -2/3 cities including Jaipur, Jammu, Ambala, Dehradun, Surat, Nagpur and Indore.
Less than 10% of India’s retail payments are currently digital, despite the short-term boost in POS installations post the currency demonetization exercise in November 2016. On the one hand the merchants don’t see any clear benefits and feel their cost of doing business goes up by 1-2% (due to applicable Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) processing fees). On the other hand, they perceive an unwanted loss of flexibility in not being able to immediately use their daily sales proceeds from transactions on a given day, as typically settlement of digital transactions happens on the next bank working day, which can be even 2-3 days later in case of intervening holidays.
Designed specifically to ease the transition from cash-to-cards for such first-time card accepting merchants, the Innoviti-POS solution hits these problems at their core. Firstly, the product transfers funds for all transactions done on a day till 6 p.m. on the same day at 8 p.m. The retailer can therefore withdraw his day’s sales proceeds as cash from an ATM or use it to issue cheques on the very same day.
Moreover, Innoviti-POS assures this same day settlement on all 365-days of the years irrespective of bank holidays. This settlement on bank holidays helps them save valuable interest on any bank overdrafts taken by the retailer for managing the working capital for their business. Retailers reduce overdraft interest by depositing their daily excess earnings everyday into their bank current account. If their earning is in cash, they cannot deposit the same on bank holidays. However, if the earning is through Innoviti-POS, that is directly deposited into their current account, thereby reducing the outstanding overdraft and therefore interest outgo.
“Small town merchants till now have only seen the cost side of accepting digital payments and increased hassles. With Innoviti-POS, they are being exposed to the real power of digital technology, where their hard-earned money can earn more money for them. We strongly believe our same day, every day fund transfer technology will help new merchants enter card acceptance with an experience that is as good, if not better than cash. This has the potential to be the key to plugging the currently yawning supply-demand gap in terms of POS infrastructure in India retail.”– said Rajeev Agrawal, CEO, Innoviti.
