Soft PoS will empower merchants in a big way: Worldline (India) CEO

"Demonetisation provided the biggest boost to PoS machines", said Ramesh Narasimhan

Worldline India, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Paris-based Worldline, is a leading player in the payment space and caters to 1.5 million merchants in the country. In 2020, Worldline’s acquisition of Ingenico for $8.6 billion made it the largest payment player in Europe and fourth in the world. Ramesh Narasimhan, chief executive officer of Worldline (India), spoke with Raghu Mohan on emerging trends in the local acceptance business. Edited excerpts:

The number of outlets with point-of-sale (PoS) machine acceptance is still poor, at just above 6 million units, despite digital being the in-thing.

A certain infrastructure is needed to maintain a