SoftPoS to revolutionize digital payments infrastructure in semi-urban and rural India: Cashfree Payments & The Digital Fifth Report

Point-of-Sale (PoS) terminals today are increasingly sophisticated, feature-rich, easy to use, and available at a range of prices. The benefit that the softPoS brings here is that it is a simple app/ SDK (software development kit), creating payments acceptance infrastructure that is low-cost and easy to distribute. Any merchant can commence accepting payments via an app download onto an NFC enabled device, quickly converting it into a PoS terminal without any additional hardware like a card reader or separate installation. The softPoS thus allows the quick and easy acceptance of card, UPI, QR code and payments link-based payments for merchants, even on their existing smartphones and other devices.

For small and medium businesses, factors like cost, time for acquisition and maintenance become a barrier to PoS’s adoption, leading to a preference for cash payments. Secondly, another critical factor is the high dependency on the imported physical PoS terminals. As an alternative, softPoS can work as a game-changer to foster digital payments, owing to increased internet and smartphone penetration in semi-urban and rural areas. Even for larger businesses, the ease of its deployment and its portability makes it a good choice for specific use-cases.

The report dives into the evolution of the PoS terminal, the changing payments landscape with UPI’s entry and the softPoS’s potential to level the playing field for cards in the offline space, the specific advantages the softPoS offers for specific businesses from retailers to restaurants to service providers to the government, and lastly the many steps providing essential regulatory support coming in and the challenges that remain with the softPoS’s adoption.

Akash Sinha, CEO and Co-Founder, Cashfree Payments said, “We are pleased to launch this insightful report in partnership with The Digital Fifth. We believe that softPoS can be one of the major solutions that will help drive digital payments in India and enhance customer experience. We, at Cashfree Payments, are already working towards offering smart and simple softPoS solutions for a sustainable digital payments ecosystem and intend to provide merchants with an easy, safe and instant payments infrastructure.”

Sameer Singh Jaini, Founder and CEO, The Digital Fifth said, “SoftPoS will embrace merchants, right from the smallest kirana stores to MSMEs, into the digital financial fray. This will boost growth from the grassroots and propel financial inclusion. It will also go on to form the foundation for embedded POS in mobile apps, a feat which was not possible before now. This will drastically enhance the payment process for all entities involved as well as seamlessly integrate the tedious procedure of reconciliation. We must brace ourselves for the incoming innovative use cases that will positively impact the payments ecosystem.”

With over 50% market share among payment processors, Cashfree Payments today leads the way in bulk disbursals in India with its product Payouts. Recently, India’s largest lender, SBI invested in Cashfree Payments, further underscoring the company’s role in building a robust payments ecosystem. Cashfree Payments works closely with all leading banks to build their core payments and banking infrastructure that helps power the company’s products, and is also integrated with major platforms such as Shopify, Wix, Paypal, Amazon Pay, Paytm and Google Pay. Apart from India, Cashfree Payments products are being used in eight other countries including the USA, Canada and UAE.

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