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Govt plans 20 lakh POS machines

Last Updated 01 February 2017, 20:02 IST

 In a bid to encourage digital payment transactions, the government on Wednesday said that banks have set a target to introduce additional 10 lakh new POS (point of sales) terminals by March 2017. They will be encouraged to introduce 20 lakh Aadhaar-based PoS by September 2017.

Reacting to the announcement, Paynear Solutions CEO Priti Shah said, “This is a great move, and an encouragement to fintech companies to play a big role in the ecosystem to digitise India. Paynear is keen to have a decent market share and plans to deploy over 1.5 lakh devices in this financial year.”

The industry is particularly enthused by the removal of import duty for POS machines — which will be doubled in 20 lakh by June — and removing service charges on rail bookings on the country’s largest ecommerce site IRCTC.

Fino Paytech MD and CEO Rishi Gupta said, “The customs and excise duty relaxation provided to firms engaged in the manufacturing of digital devices such as micro ATMS, POS/mPOS will further help create a robust and strong digital ecosystem to facilitate electronic transactions.”

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) also welcomed the moves and affirmed its support to achieve targets. “NPCI will continue to innovate and introduce new payments mechanism to support the ecosystem,” said Managing Director and Chief Executive A P Hota.

On challenges, Priti said, “We are yet to see the infrastructure to deploy Aadhaar devices in terms of connectivity, fingerprint connected to multiple bank accounts, time taken to complete transactions, and also the visibility of penetration to the last mile. Every new initiative to scale and create innovation takes time, but we see to make this happen. We at Paynear welcome this initiative and would be an active player in deployment of Aadhar devices by doing our best in encompassing the challenges faced which in our control.”

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(Published 01 February 2017, 20:02 IST)

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