How The Digital Wave Has Taken Over The Basic In Times Of A Pandemic

There have been multiple reports in the previous days and weeks about how digital payments in India have bounced back in a big way from when the lockdown was instituted in March. This is not particularly surprising news; digital payments have now been on an upward trend for a while now and will continue to do so. All the Covid19 pandemic did was pause digital payments and this was to be expected given the lockdowns and ensuing store closures and a general stoppage of e-commerce transactions.  Post the lifting of the lockdown, digital transactions were bound to rebound dramatically given the pent-up demand for goods and services.

The payments space has always been at the fore-front of innovation and in many ways was ready with payment options that were ideal for a pandemic like situation. The mantra during the pandemic was contactless and the payment space was ready for this well before the pandemic hit. Point-of-sale (POS) terminals had the ability to accept contactless transactions from NFC cards while mobile phones could be used to do transactions using QR codes while e-commerce transactions were naturally contactless. In many ways, digital payments are the perfect antidote to cash payments; research studies have shown currency to be a conduit for bacteria.   

Looking forward, it is worth noting that in any payments scenario, there is a buyer, there is a seller and money goes from the former to the latter and the only thing that is evolving is the form factor. In a post Covid scenario, the drivers will be cost, convenience and hygiene and a mobile phone with a secure app that has the ability to accept all payment channels in a contactless fashion will be a big winner. That said, POS terminals will likely continue to underpin the growth of digital payments in the country. There are a number of POS terminals in the field and these can be used safely if disinfected regularly. Most of these POS terminals can accept NFC cards and transactions below Rs. 2000 do not need any physical contact at all with the machine. 

Pandemic or not, the payments space will continue to innovate with the customer user experience driving this innovation. To this end, we will continue to see increased use of the mobile phone for making and accepting digital payments. Apart from this, there will continue be increased use cases for Android POS terminals – POS terminals are still the most secure way of accepting card transactions and will likely be so for some time to come. 

As a technology innovator in the payments space, Worldline has been at the forefront of this movement. We recently launched a Soft POS mobile application that will allow merchants to accept card transactions through Tap-on-Phone for NFC enabled cards. The app also allows merchants to accept cards through QR and Link pay where the merchant can SMS or Email a payment link to their customers. This low-cost channel will increase digital payments acceptance in the country, something that is the need of the hour.