Innoviti bags ‘Innovation Wizards’ award at REACH – Mastercard® Acceptance Summit 2019, Mumbai

For new ‘Innoviti-POS’ solution, aimed at accelerating digital acceptance in Tier-2/ Tier-3

  • Innoviti Technologies won the “Innovation Wizards” award at the REACH – Mastercard® Acceptance Summit 2019 held in Mumbai in April. The prestigious event is one of India’s largest industry conferences focusing on expanding merchant digital payment acceptance across the country.
  • Award won by Innoviti’s newly launched Innoviti-POS card payment acceptance solution which is targeted at enabling rapid scale-up of POS-based digital payment acceptance amongst smaller retailers in Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns across India.
  • Designed to address key inhibitors for small town retailers, Innoviti-POS focuses on specific concerns of merchants who are used to cash acceptance and see little or no benefit in going digital. They perceive an unwanted increase in their cost of business as digital payments are charged processing costs unlike cash. Further, accepting cash helps them to easily make payments to their own suppliers coming for daily collections, a flexibility they fear will be lost since digital payment settlements are typically credited only after a few days lag.
  • Launched as an instantly-installable POS-in-box solution, Innoviti-POS incorporates a unique feature that allows transfer of funds for settlement of digital transactions to the merchant’s account, on the very same day that those transactions are made. Moreover, this same day transfer is guaranteed every single day, i.e. all 365 days of the year irrespective of any weekend, public or Bank holidays. This represents significant interest cost savings for merchants who are using overdraft facilities on their current accounts.
  • Innoviti-POS has already been piloted across 12 small towns with populations of 5 to 15 lakhs and relatively lower digital penetration. About 1500 merchants have currently been piloted with more than 15% of their business going digital.
  • Innoviti is backed by marquee investors including the Singapore-based SBI FMO Emerging Asia Financial Sector Fund (the “SBI-FMO Fund” jointly setup by SBI Holdings Group of Japan and FMO of Netherlands), Bessemer Venture Partners and Catamaran.

Mumbai, April 30th 2019: Leading payments company, Innoviti Technologies won “Innovation Wizards” award at REACH – Mastercard® Acceptance Summit 2019 in Mumbai for its product Innoviti POS which is designed to accelerate the adoption of digital payments acceptance amongst small retailers in Tier 2/3 towns across India. The prestigious event is one of India’s largest conferences focusing on accelerating merchant digital payment acceptance and witnessed exciting talks and panel discussions with senior executives from Mastercard, leading banks like SBI, RBL Bank, Yes Bank and Axis Bank, and leading fintech players.

 

The award-winning Innoviti-POS product focuses on specific concerns of merchants who are used to cash acceptance and see little or no benefit in going digital because they feel their cost of doing business goes up by 1-2% due to applicable Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) processing fees. Further, they perceive an unwanted loss of flexibility in not being able to immediately use their daily sales proceeds from transactions on a given day, as typically settlement of digital transactions happens on the next bank working day, which can be even 2-3 days later in case of intervening holidays. Moreover, they prefer not to get entangled into the intimidating installation-onboarding-activation cycle that takes upwards of 20 days.

 

To ease the transition from cash-to-cards for such first-time card-accepting merchants, Innoviti-POS is designed as a ready-to-use product which can be unpacked, installed and activated on the spot. In keeping with its positioning, the Innoviti-POS package also relieves the merchant of the need to open new current accounts to receive card settlements or sign new bank agreements, as they can now simply route them to any of their existing bank accounts by entering their basic KYC details into the Innoviti-POS Onboarding App. It transfers settlement funds for all transactions done on a particular day till 6 p.m., to merchants’ accounts by 8 p.m. on the very same day, thus enabling withdrawal of the day’s sales proceeds via an ATM or via issuance of cheques on the very same day. Moreover, Innoviti-POS assures this same day settlement service on all 365-days of the year irrespective of bank holidays.

 

Innoviti POS is targeted specifically at speeding up the enrolment of such small retail stores in Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns across India, like Jaipur, Jammu, Ambala, Karnal, Dehradun, Surat, Nagpur, Indore, etc. Its unique benefits have attracted over 1500 merchants across 12 mainly Tier 2/3 cities, during the pilot between September 2018 to March 2019, to adopt Innoviti-POS and start migrating their business from cash to card. The average monthly transaction on these terminals is ₹ 98,000.

 

Innoviti will now be commercially launching this product across the country for smaller retail merchants. The company’s payment platform serves a marquee client base of merchants including Reliance Retail, Titan, Landmark Group, INOX, Indigo, Walmart and several others. Leading banks such as HDFC, ICICI, Axis, SBI, Standard Chartered, Kotak and Citibank use their platform to access customers for processing their payments and distributing loans to them.

 

Quotes:

“Innovating to find solutions to real-life problems of Indian retail merchants is at the core of Innoviti’s DNA, and we are naturally delighted at receiving the Innovation Wizards award at such a prestigious forum for expanding digital payment acceptance. Small town merchants till now have only seen the cost side of accepting digital payments and increased hassles. With Innoviti-POS, they are being exposed to the real power of digital technology, where their hard-earned money can earn more money for them. We strongly believe our same day, everyday fund transfer technology will help new merchants enter card acceptance with an experience that is as good, if not better than cash. This potentially holds the key to plugging the currently yawning supply-demand gap in terms of POS infrastructure in India retail.”– said Mr. Rajeev Agrawal, CEO, Innoviti.

 

Vikas Saraogi, Vice President, Acceptance, Market Development, South Asia, Mastercard, said “Merchants are a critical element of India’s digital economy. In Mastercard’s vision of reaching 10 million merchants by 2020, partnerships with stakeholders in the digital payments ecosystem play a vital role. We are delighted to acknowledge Innoviti’s contributions to help make this vision a reality and congratulate them for winning the award for ‘New Innovation Wizards’. Innoviti’s instantly-installable Innoviti-POS with its Same Day Money promise is an excellent example of innovative acceptance solutions that address key merchant challenges and deliver a more friction-free on-boarding experience. We look forward to strengthening this partnership in the long run.”

 

About Innoviti Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Bengaluru, India.

Innoviti Technologies runs a payment platform that has a unique ability to add intelligence to traditional payment channels, enhancing their value. Merchants, brands and financial service providers use these intelligent payment channels to reduce cost and drive sales of their products. Innoviti processes over Rs. 40,000 Cr. of payment transactions, about 6% of all offline merchant payment transactions in India. This also includes Rs. 1.500 Cr. of transactions involving distribution of loans to consumers and small businesses. The most capital efficient company in this space, Innoviti processes more volume for every $ raised than any other payments company. The company is backed by marquee investors such as Catamaran Ventures, SBI Venture Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners.

 

About Mastercard

Mastercard (NYSE: MA), www.mastercard.com, is a technology company in the global payments industry. Our global payments processing network connects consumers, financial institutions, merchants, governments and businesses in more than 210 countries and territories. Mastercard products and solutions make everyday commerce activities – such as shopping, traveling, running a business and managing finances – easier, more secure and more efficient for everyone. Follow us on Twitter @mastercardindia, join the discussion on the Beyond the Transaction Blog and subscribe for the latest news on the Engagement Bureau.

For more information, please visit – www.innoviti.com/