Through an easy-to-use NFC mobile app, the platform aims to attract solopreneurs and SMEs onto its secure PCI SSC payment ecosystem.
India’s rush to digitalize amid desperate pandemic control measures has seen digital payment platforms proliferating and finding acceptance among Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs).
One well-known merchant-commerce platform in Asia has jumped on the bandwagon, differentiating itself by leveraging a unique cloud-based platform to offer a wide range of payment acceptance and merchant commerce solutions. These include enterprise automation processes such as inventory management and customer relationship management.
Pine Labs’s AllTap is a Near-Field Communication (NFC)-enabled smartphone app aimed at accelerating digital payments adoption among MSMEs in India. The app is specifically targeted at small merchants and vendors, including home entrepreneurs, street vendors, hawkers, cab drivers and others who are averse to traditional point-of-sale (PoS) terminals for digital payments. The promised advantage? It does not require the use of any additional hardware or technical know-how to use such platforms.
Said B. Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs: “We heard from the solopreneurs: they wanted a simple digital payments acceptance solution.” As NFC-enabled smartphones are now available for less than Rs 20,000, “every merchant’s NFC-enabled smartphone is now a payments acceptance device. The app has tremendous potential to bridge the digital divide not only in India, but also in other markets.”
The ‘tap and pay’ feature within the app is said to be secure and apparently, is certified by the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC), RuPay, Visa, Mastercard and Amex. AllTap is said to have been extensively audited and certified for compliance with the robust PCI SSC-compliant Contactless Payments on COTS (CPoC) solution that ensures transactions are fully secure.
Besides being easy for even beginners to register and use, the app has a major advantage in that it allows merchants to add a host of additional features such as converting a transaction into an instalment scheme to increase sales.
