The country’s largest private sector lender HDFC Bank plans to deploy one million of its newly launched point of sales (PoS) machines per year, said Parag Rao, Group head of payments, consumer finance, liability product group, among others. “We clearly see a significant deployment of such a terminal. We see the opportunity where merchants will stop having multiple terminals of different banks, and probably consolidate in one from the primary bank,” he told businessline.
HDFC Bank launched its new “all in one” PoS machine this week at the global fintech festival. The PoS machine integrates point-of-sale (PoS), QR code scanner and soundbox features. It enables payment acceptance by supporting card dip, tap & pay and QR scan.
Rao said that currently HDFC Bank works with nearly 4.5 million merchants and the cost of the PoS machine would be around ₹1,200-₹1,300 per device.
Bank-fintech partnership
Rao said HDFC Bank is open to partnering with fintechs on developing front-end, midware and back-end solutions. The lender had earlier launched its SmartHub Vyapar app in collaboration with embedded fintech platform Mintoak, and PayZapp app in collaboration with Zeta, among others.
“We are looking at all areas of partnership including the entire gamut of retail assets covering secured to unsecured lending, payments and some areas of liabilities as it is a restricted area. In the SME space too, we are looking at some wholesale lending partnerships,” he said. “On the back-end, we are looking at fintechs to bring us capability of artificial intelligence, machine learning, efficiency optimisation and far more simpler digital journeys,” he added.
The lender recently partnered with a venture capital firm Pravega and launched a “co-lab” platform. The programme invites fintechs to display their products and upon shortlisting the bank initiates business with the fintechs.
“We want to send a message to the fintech community that we are serious about co-development and innovation. We have certain strength, brand and capabilities internally. We believe fintechs do bring more services like digital stack, and they are nimble and agile. Together we can do business,” he said. The lender is also in discussion to join the ONDC’s financials servicesand is assessing joining the newly launched Unified Lending Interface (ULI) platform, Rao said.
