Ranchi, Dec. 5: Swipe your card, key in your ATM PIN and buy ease.
The demonetisation drive has spurred a surge in demand for card swipe or point of sale (POS) machines in the state capital with most merchants choosing to accept credit and debit cards in the absence of enough cash circulation.
An employee of Pine Labs, a manufacturer of card-swipe machines, said that since November 8, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced withdrawal of 500-rupee and 1,000-rupee notes, they had received orders for around 2,000 devices. Earlier, they sold not more than 50 devices per month. "The demand is maximum for SBI swipe machines," the employee added.
State sales manager of merchant acquiring business department of SBI, Amit Kumar, agreed that they were being flooded with requests for card-swipe machines from merchants. "Since November 8, we had received requests for 3,000 machines across the state, 1,600 from Ranchi. Earlier, the demand per month was berely 150," Kumar added.
Manager of Kishoreganj branch of Indian Overseas Bank, S.M. Sharma, said that they were also receiving queries from traders.
But, people like Pradeep Kumar have already started experiencing hiccups.
The garments shop owner at Harmu market said though he had bought a POS machine a week ago, he had not been able to use it. "Although the SBI machine debits amount from the cards of customers, the money does not get credited in my account. As a result, around 60 cashless customers returned from my shop without purchasing anything in the past week," Kumar said.
Manoj Yadav, who has a cosmetics shop in the same locality, complained of network blues. Another merchant at Doranda raised the issue of extra expenses. "We have to pay extra charges in the form of merchant discount rate (MDR) and service tax apart from rent of the machine. Though till December 31, MDR and service charge have been waived for debit card users, we anticipate extra burden from January," he added.
SBI's Amit Kumar described these as "teething problems". "We are imparting training to merchants. A trader will not have to devote extra time for handling cash and MDR is negligible. It is 0.75 per cent for transactions up to Rs 2,000 and 1.60 per cent to 2 per cent for transactions of more than Rs 2,000."
General manager of State Level Bankers' Committee Prasad Joshi also said card-swipe machines were a necessity now, as cash crunch continued at ATMs and banks today.
Advocate Madhu Kumari said that she paid visits to three SBI ATMs at Kadru, Harmu and Chutia in the morning, but got no cash.
