POS business of BharatPe has grown to $4 billion in annualised transaction value

The POS business of BharatPe, a fintech startup for merchants, has increased by 200 percent in annualised transaction value to $4 billion (about Rs 30,078 crore) in the previous year.

BharatSwipe, the company's Point of Sale (POS) subsidiary, currently generates roughly 25% of the company's entire payments Transaction Processed Value, according to a statement (TPV).

According to a press release, BharatSwipe's Point of Sale (POS) business generates about 25% of the company's entire payments Transaction Processed Value (TPV).

"The phenomenal growth can be attributed to the company's POS business expanding into non-metro cities, with more than half of BharatSwipe machines deployed in tier II/tier III towns and cities since 2021. Small merchants and retailers have uniformly implemented BharatSwipe in a variety of sectors, including grocery, food and beverage, electronics, and durables, among others," it was stated.

In August of last year, BharatPe and Axis Bank struck a strategic partnership. As part of the arrangement, Axis Bank became the acquiring bank for BharatPe's POS business, allowing businesses affiliated with BharatPe to accept credit and debit cards.

BharatPe will continue to establish strategic collaborations with banks, financial institutions, and brands, according to the release, with the purpose of improving the consumer experience on its POS devices.

The company wants to reach $30 billion in total payment volume (TPV) via QR and Swipe by March 2023.

"BharatSwipe has been India's POS industry's biggest growth storey, starting with ten cities in the midst of Covid-19 in 2020 and now processing $4 billion in payments annually." "We have seen multi-fold growth in our POS business over the last year, driven by our aggressive development plans in tier II, III, and IV towns and cities," BharatPe CEO Suhail Sameer said.

He went on to say that because of the high rental costs associated with POS machines, a large percentage of shops in smaller cities have never used one.

"As a result, (BharatPe) used the opportunity to promote our zero-rental POS devices. We were able to provide POS to several small retailers in last-mile places like Alappuzha, Azamgarh, and Chalisgaon, which had minimal digital penetration. In fact, almost 60% of our merchants have never used a point-of-sale system before," he stated.

According to Sameer, the change to digital payments offers a range of benefits for merchants and the economy at general, including customer delight in pandemics, a better record of transactions, and, most importantly, access to credit.

"The integration of POS allows us to analyse a merchant's financial soundness based on his daily transactions and, as a result, facilitate business loans based on the merchant's eligibility, in collaboration with NBFCs," he explained.