Merchants' mobile phone as PoS? Yes, MasterCard, Axis Bank make this possible, launch soft PoS

MasterCard, Axis Bank and Worldline today launched Soft PoS (Point of Sale) to become the first financial payments service in India to transform everyday smartphones into merchant Point of Sale terminals. The solution comes with various features for the merchant community. Merchants who have traditionally accepted cash payments, now have a simpler and more secure way to manage transactions. The merchant community can start using Soft PoS almost instantly as the online registration process with the acquiring bank takes less than 30 minutes. The solution is available as a white label solution to all banks and payment aggregators in the industry. This solution is called “Tap on Phone” which means a cardholder can tap his/her contactless card on the merchant Smart phone with NFC functionality and hence encourages social distancing.

The solution addresses the needs of small businesses, especially during these challenging times of COVID-19. The solution enables face-to-face payments with Bharat QR and NFC payments, as well as remote payments for home deliveries via link-based payments. The app also allows banks to have complete visibility of a merchant’s transactions, making it easier for small merchants to get business loans.

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Speaking on the soft PoS launch Vikas Saraogi, Vice President, Head of Acceptance, South Asia, Mastercard said, “To support Digital India and the country’s evolution to a less cash society, MasterCard is delighted to partner with Axis Bank and Worldline in its journey to equip 10 million merchants with digital payments acceptance infrastructure by 2020-21. Given the current pandemic, an option of accepting cashless payments and the speed of transactions are paramount for small merchants across the country. MasterCard has been working towards merchant and consumer education, development of low-cost payments acceptance solutions and last-mile support for merchants to start their digital onboarding. This solution is a great opportunity for us to support micro-merchants in conducting their business smoothly with contactless payments."

Commenting on the announcement, 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.  Announcing the launch of Soft POS, an innovative app specially designed for this community, is a step in that endeavor. Not only does this collaborative effort of MasterCard, Worldline and Axis Bank, open up a different channel for this community but also helps in penetrating the unexplored horizons of small ticket size merchants. We are excited to see how the smartphone turns into a business solution by bringing the merchant community into the tap, text & tweet world of ours."

The application is available in eight languages and easily links with platforms such as Google Pay, WhatsApp Pay, Amazon Pay, amongst others. The launch of this app will allow more and more small merchants to accept contactless payments directly through their smartphones. For the cardholders, it is the most convenient payment method with the seamless shopping experience. The app is currently only available to Android users, however, will soon be launched for I-phone users as well.