Naresh runs a well-equipped retail store in Ajmer, a small town in Rajasthan. While the town and his store both are brimming with commercial activities- Naresh observed a strange plateau in his business in spite of having a well-provided store. Naresh had an efficient home delivery system, an updated inventory, card payment system and a clean store ambiance to make for a good shopping experience.
While still contemplating the sales stagnation, he came across the Pay1 mPOS, meant for retail stores, merchants and small business owners, dealing with small and medium-sized cash transaction on an everyday basis. The mPOS (mobile point-of-sales) is a step towards integrating mobile and digital payments. A mobile POS system is designed to accept card payments but isn’t physically fixed to one point, unlike traditional POS systems. Typically mPOS systems consist of a card reader that is paired with a smart device (like a smartphone or tablet) either wirelessly or physically (ex: an earphone jack).
Naresh signed up for the mPOS machine, which comes with features beneficial for the customer and the retailer. Some of the salient features like low infrastructure cost, it works well even for merchants with low transaction volumes. Typically a merchant only needs a mobile phone while the other requirements are given by Pay1. It has an easy to use interface and comes with various flexible and cost-efficient monthly or yearly plans. Because the mPOS systems are completely portable, they can be used anywhere in and away from the business.
From a customer perspective, it reduces the chances of card rejection as the machine accepts all banks credit and debit cards making it a seamless payment experience. The digital receipts also make it convenient for the customer to save bills. mPOS reduces the cost of cashless payment acceptance to a fraction, thus making mPOS a preferred mode of payment for the customers.
After a couple of weeks, Naresh got an answer to his conundrum. The reason for laggard growth was that customers tend to out off discretionary and impulse purchases due to lack of cash in the wallet and choose the cheaper options. A lot of times, customers decided to abandon the shopping all together to avoid the long queue at the billing counter. While Naresh had a POS machine, the customer needed to wade through the queue to reach his turn to swipe his card.
A lot of times home delivery also got bombed as the customer did not have the exact change to pay to the delivery staff. But a mPOS machine, which was a wireless card payment option, turned out to be the answer for a lot of impulse purchases being put away an opportunity to upsell being lost by staff busy in handling customer traffic and queues at the billing counter.
The change in business at Naresh General Store after the Pay1 mPOS machine:
- Queue busting: The mobility aspect of the mPOS device helps merchants provide a more personalised experience to customers. The sales representatives have the ability to check out customers within the aisle instead of the check-out lanes.
- Increased sales: The opportunity to cross-sell and upsell is greater as the staff gets more time to engage with the customer and get an opportunity for consultative selling. A mobile POS is known to encourage spur or impulse buys and thereby improve sales.
- Streamlines bookkeeping: With added applications that aid building contracts and keeping customer records, the mPOS goes a long way inefficient bookkeeping. The revenue and cash flow can also be viewed in real time. Another advantage of cashless payments is that taxes that need to be paid to and by your businesses can be easily computed with no error.
- KYC (Know your customer): When payments are made electronically, merchants can easily track the buying pattern of their consumers. They can also create customer rewards for specific target segment with focused loyalty programs make customised shopping carts and send reminders and promotions and offers on products to the targeted customer. These customised campaigns improve customer stickiness and, in turn, increase your sales.
