BHOPAL: There has been a ten-fold increase in the demand for Point of Sale (PoS) machines, better known card swipe machines, after the demonetisation of Rs 500 and 1000 currency notes.
Credit card swipe machines, POS or Electronic Data Capture (EDC) devices are generally owned by the banks and the retailers use them on their premises. A range of machines is offered by the banks with different rent slots. Mainly, four kinds of POS machines are available. PSTN get connectivity through a normal telephone line, Desktop GPRS get connectivity through GPRS SIM and power from source in retailer’s premises, Portable GPRS get connectivity through GPRS SIM and power through an inbuilt battery and Mobile POS. Normally every month around 400 inquiries are made by the retailers in SBI but over the last just 6-7 days, the bank has received around 4000 enquiries.
An officer of Bank of India informed Free Press that the current account of the merchant is the first qualification to provide the POS. The bank charges Rs 540 per month as rent for fixed machines and Rs 1200 for the cordless ones.
Other charges are also applicable: like for every swipe of the debit card .75 percent is charged up Rs 2000 transactions and one percent for Rs 2000-plus transactions.
In case of credit cards, the limit is from zero percent to 1.75 percent. Sometimes the bank exempts the swipe charges depends upon the size of the transactions.
These charges are deposited by the merchant but in some cases, merchants pass on the charges on the costumers. The ICICI Bank also provides the POS to its account holders, the relationship manager Sourabh Patkar informed that, for the fixed POS they did not charge and for the cordless it is Rs 700 per month. He added that normally, in every month around 5-6 machines are installed, but in 6-7 days around 12 machines have been installed.
