BharatPe aims for 3x growth in POS business by FY22

By Leandra Monteiro

BharatPe, an Indian FinTech company for merchants, today announced aggressive plans to scale up its POS business. The company shared that it aims to grow its POS business (BharatSwipe) by 3x and has set a target of US$ 6bn in annualized TPV by the end of FY22.

BharatPe, which is now the No. 3 player in private POS category, will also ramp up its reach by 5x and sell BharatSwipe in 80 cities across India by 2022 end. Additionally, BharatPe plans to ramp up brand partnerships significantly, and offer consumer credit to drive further value on the POS business.

BharatPe had launched BharatSwipe, its disruptive card payment acceptance machine in the second half of 2020. This business has scaled up rapidly, and now contributes 20% to the overall payments Transaction Processed Value (TPV) of the company. Today, BharatPe has an installed base of over 1,00,000 BharatSwipe machines across 16 cities in the country and facilitates transactions of over INR 14 billion every month.

Speaking on the success of BharatSwipe, Suhail Sameer, Group President, BharatPe said, “We have witnessed phenomenal growth in our POS business. I believe it is our disruptive business model that worked in our favour and appealed to the small merchants. With 60% of our POS merchants being first time card acceptance machine users, and with industry-leading active POS machine rates, we believe that the business is ripe for growth. We have also recently welcomed Gautam Kaushik (ex-MD and CEO PAYBACK; ex-CFO American Express) into our team, who is leading the scale-up of this business. We plan to grow this vertical by over 3x in the current fiscal. We will be expanding our reach on the POS business to 80 cities and deploy 3 lac machines by end of FY22. Additionally, we are exploring strategic partnerships with banks, financial institutions and brands with the objective of enhancing the customer experience on our POS devices. This would include providing customer credit offerings in the form of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL). We would also add new and innovative loyalty and rewards features to our POS devices to aid merchants’ business growth and drive increased consumer footfalls at their shops.”

BharatSwipe allows merchants to accept payments from a range of credit and debit cards, with the option of paying zero transaction fees. With BharatSwipe, merchants can also accept QR payments, via dynamic QR generated on the Swipe machine. Also, its feature of generating physical receipts for QR payments done via BharatPe’s UPI QR is one of the most sought-after features of the device. Recently, BharatPe launched ‘holiday settlements’ feature for its BharatSwipe merchants. This feature allows merchants to accept settlements even on a bank holiday, thereby, ensuring liquidity at all times.