Finally, there is a Square for India. MTS has announced launch of revolutionary service on its smartphones called – mPOS or Mobile as Point of Sale. The MTS mPOS is essentially a combination of a smartphone app along with a small hardware that reads debit or credit cards. The combination of this software and hardware doubles up the smartphone into a cost effective credit card swiping machine.
MTS has launched mPOS as a bundle with its cheap mTag smartphone. Its is expected that the whole bundle (MTS MTag 3.1, mPOS attachment & One year Data plan) will cost roughly around Rs. 4000 making this attractive to many small businesses, Individuals as well as businesses who do home deliveries of their product. The average monthly spends on usage of MTS mPOS would be between Rs.200 – Rs.300.
How to use MTS mPOS
Merchant interested in this service has to first download the mPOS application on the MTS Smartphone (for the first time only). Once the mPOS attachment is connected to the Smartphone via the audio jack, it is ready for credit / debit card swiping.
After credit card is swiped, customer needs to check the transaction details shown on the screen and authorize the transaction. The customer signatures can be taken on the MTS Smartphone screen itself. Once the payment is processed, intimation is sent to the card holder via SMS and email. For merchants the amounts are transferred to the registered bank account.
MTS mPOS is currently undergoing a pilot with large Indian online retailers like Flipkart.com and Yebhi.com.
What we are expecting
MTS has made it proprietorial but considering India’s market we were expecting them to make the application available across all devices. Anyways, we do expect them to take that initiative soon as there are many more players entering this market now.
