Months after launch, BharatPe records $2 bn annualised transaction value from PoS

BharatSwipe, the point of sales (PoS) service by fintech startup BharatPe, clocked in $2 billion in annualised transaction value within three months of its launch. 

The PoS business currently makes up 25% of BharatPe’s overall annualised transaction value, the Delhi-based company said in a statement on Thursday.

The fintech firm, which currently has a presence in 10 cities, looks to increase the number to 40 by the end of financial year 2020-21 and more than double its annualised transaction value from PoS to $5 billion.

BharatPe is the country’s first zero rental card machine, which allows merchants to opt for zero transaction charges. Apart from allowing payments through debit and credit cards, it generates a receipt for both card and QR transactions. 

“BharatSwipe has been one of our biggest success stories. In just about a quarter, our PoS business is now 1/4th of our annualised transaction value,” Suhail Sameer, group president, BharatPe, said.

“We launched a PoS machine with zero rental and zero transaction fee, which resonated well with the merchant community and helped us get a headstart in this competitive market… Interestingly, our average daily active merchants on PoS are much higher than the industry average,” he said.

“We will be aggressively focusing on building this business as we expand to newer markets. We currently have close to 35,000 machines in the market and are targeting 1,00,000 PoS machines deployment by the end of the current fiscal. Also, we have recently launched cash advance loans based on the merchant’s PoS transaction data and initial data looks very promising. We will be scaling this up in the coming months.”

BharatSwipe was launched months after Paytm introduced its all-in-one android PoS device. As the competition intensifies in the UPI payments segment, payment apps players rush to take control of the offline store points. 

Companies are exploring different ways to win this race. In 2018, PhonePe acquired PoS SaaS startup Zopper Retail, even as Google Pay tied up with Pine Labs, one of the largest PoS device manufacturers in India.

Fintech and payments app players are currently gauging and hedging their revenue, before the daily transactions are capped at 30%, as per the new UPI app regulations.