While the recent demonetization was a move in the right direction, the liquidity crunch created a searing impact on people and businesses alike. A practical state of panic persisted among the general public and there was an immediate need to transact digitally, something that Indian masses were not used to, especially in non-metro areas where cash was the general mode of transactions and payments.
While individuals were grappling with the situation by standing in long ATM queues and switching to digital modes like cards and digital wallets to fulfill their needs, many businesses, especially the small merchants – the local kiranas, lacked the infrastructure to transact digitally.
This is where the real problem rested. And, just to size up this problem – there are 12 million kirana stores in India, which translates into 10 stores per 1,000 Indians. Now, a problem of this magnitude requires immediate action and being part of the Indian payments space, this problem became as much ours as the merchants. Hence, our strongest teams put their minds together to build a product to help small merchants accept online/digital payments.
We had to keep in mind a bunch of factors:
(a) The urgency for a solution,
(b) The lack of POS hardware,
(c) The immediate need to enable alternate modes of payments like debit card, credit card, netbanking, digital wallets, UPI at physical stores.
The result was ePOS – a nifty, easy to use app to enable small merchants to accept digital transactions.
Solving specific small merchant problems, ePOS witnessed significant adoption from merchants across various regions in India. To better understand the impact of the solution, let’s take a look at the stories of two merchants who greatly benefitted from ePOS.
HP Tirumala Filling Station
A normal day at HP Tirumala Filling Station in suburban Haryana would include bikers, scooterists and a few cars stopping to fuel their vehicles before they got about their days. Nothing unusual here, however one thing that was different was that they all paid only in cash, largely because the petrol station only accepted cash.
Given this, can you imagine the chaos and commotion that would have been caused by the demonetization? Kuldeep Bishnoi, the owner of the station suddenly found himself in a situation he had not even imagined in his worst nightmares. He had to quickly find a solution to address this cash crunch problem, or else his business would suffer.
Like most Indian businesses, Kuldeep tried to purchase POS hardware or card machines to enable digital payments, however, as expected, there was a huge wait time – a period that would cause him significant monetary loss. Given this state of confusion, he discovered our new product, ePOS. The app format, the lack of any setup costs and the quick activation almost immediately drew him to the solution.
ePOS has all the functionalities of a complete online payments solution, all powered straight on a smartphone screen, through a few quick steps.
Since the launch of ePOS, HP Tirumala Filling Station has been one of our highest transacting merchants, a sign that our product is truly contributing towards addressing customer pain points during this crucial phase of demonetization.
“ePOS came as a boon during the demonetization. It was very effective and it helped us quickly collect payments by just using a simple app”
Kuldeep Bishnoi, HP Tirumala Filling Station.
Luxuria Trip Planners
Luxuria Trip Planners is an offline travel booking agency which largely relied on cash and cheque payments; understandably so, given the Indian consumer’s lack of trust in digital transactions for high priced goods or services. Hence, Luxuria Trip Planners really had no reason to adopt solutions that enable digital transactions; transacting in cash was a win-win for both them and their customers – well, until demonetization.
Things suddenly changed the night of the demonetization for Luxuria Trip Planners. Being a cash heavy business put them in a state of sudden disadvantage. While they could still accept cheques, the long cheque clearing time could lead to a serious liquidity crunch and impact working capital, something that would negatively impact the business.
Kayur, the Operations Manager of Luxuria Trip Planners had to hunt for solutions that could power online transactions at minimal or no investment and quick onboarding time. Surfing online for solutions, he found that ePOS completely met his requirements and immediately downloaded the app.
In order to start accepting online payments, all he had to do was, submit the required documentation and start accepting online payments within a matter or an hour, straight from the app. ePOS is the first online payment solution that Luxuria Trip Planners have used and they found it to be not only reliable, but also effective. ePOS while being easy to use, is in fact a robust payment solution that allows for secure digital transactions across multiple payment modes.
“We were looking for a quick solution to accept online payments and were thrilled to find out that we could start accepting online payments via ePOS in an hour!”
Kayur, Luxuria Trip Planners
These examples are only a glimpse into two success stories powered by ePOS. Multiple such endearing real stories are what we come across at Razorpay on an everyday basis. As a payments company, we are thrilled that we addressed a genuine gap in the market and touched real lives at a time when
it was most needed.
Want to find out more about ePOS? Read our blog
or download the ePOS app
