BharatPe, a fintech company for merchants, on Thursday said it has witnessed 200 per cent growth in annualised transaction value to USD 4 billion (about Rs 30,078 crore) from its POS business over the last 12 months. The Point of Sale (POS) business – BharatSwipe – now contributes about 25 per cent to the overall payments Transaction Processed Value (TPV) of the company, a statement said. BharatPe has ramped up the reach of its POS business by 25X to over 250 cities in the last 12 months and since the launch in the second half of 2020, the company has deployed more than 1.25 lakh BharatSwipe machines across offline shops, it added.

“The phenomenal growth can be attributed to the expansion of the company’s POS business in non-metro cities, with more than 50 per cent of BharatSwipe machines being deployed in tier II/tier III towns and cities since 2021. BharatSwipe has been universally adopted by small merchants and retailers across categories including grocery, food and beverage, electronics and durables, among others,” it said. In August last year, BharatPe announced a strategic partnership with Axis Bank. As a part of the association, Axis Bank became the acquiring bank for BharatPe’s POS business, and enables the acceptance of credit and debit cards for merchants associated with BharatPe.

BharatPe will continue to ramp up strategic partnerships with banks, financial institutions and brands with the objective of enhancing the customer experience on its POS devices, the statement said. The company targets to reach USD 30 billion TPV on payments through both QR and Swipe by March 2023, it added. “BharatSwipe has been the biggest growth story in India’s POS industry – from making a humble beginning with 10 cities in the middle of COVID in 2020, to processing USD 4 billion payments annually today. Over the course of last year, we have witnessed multi-fold growth in our POS business, led by our aggressive expansion plans in tier II, III and IV towns and cities,” BharatPe CEO Suhail Sameer said.

He added that a large number of merchants in the smaller cities have not used a POS machine ever, owing to the traditional high rentals associated with POS. “…hence, (BharatPe) took it as an opportunity to push our zero-rental POS machines. We were able to take POS to several small merchants in last-mile areas with low digital penetration like Alappuzha, Azamgarh and Chalisgaon. In fact, over 60 per cent of our merchants are first-time POS users,” he said. Sameer said the transition to digital payments offers a range of benefits for the merchants and the economy at large- including customer delight in the times of pandemic, better record of transactions and most importantly, access to credit. “The addition of POS enables us to further assess the financial strength of a merchant from his daily transactions and thus, facilitate business loans as per the merchant’s eligibility, in partnership with NBFCs,” he added.