American Express has bought a minority stake in Indian mPOS provider Ezetap Mobile Solutions.
Ezetap has deployed 12,000 devices across South East Asia and Africa, will use the funds
to increase growth in these markets. It aims to take the total number of devices over 100,000 by next year.
American Express believes mobile point of sales solutions will play an important role in helping to further enable commerce. “Especially in small merchant segments that have historically relied on cash,” said Sanjay Rishi, President, American Express, South Asia. “Ezetap is one of the few mobile point of sale companies in the world that owns the entire technology stack from its hardware and application to its open platform, integration framework, and processing,” he said.
Although India has more than 300 million unique credit and debit cardholders, the acceptance infrastructure in India has lagged with just over 800,000 such acceptance points.
With smart-phones and tablets becoming ubiquitous, the Ezetap device, priced at around Rs 3,000 consists of a light-weight card reader that can be plugged into any smart device or feature phone used by a retailer. The technology allows anyone to accept cards–from merchants and cabdrivers to grocers and pizza delivery boys.
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