Digital payments startup Benow sees opportunity in PoS business

Mumbai based digital payments startup Benow which acquires merchants for QR code based transactions is all set to move into the hardware point of sales business sensing stronger opportunity in the card payments space. The company, founded by founders of Mastek, is looking to finalise a $5 million fund raising plan within the next two months to fuel its ambitions in the retail digital payments space. “Smartphone based digital payments for street corner shops is growing slower than expected, hence we are adding point of sales to our offering for our merchant partners, which will let them accept card payments as well,” said Sudhakar Ram, chief executive officer, Benow. Ram said with one lakh onboarded merchants for their QR code UPI-based payment solution, the target is to push this number to 13 lakh in the next five years. “We are seeing around 10 to 30% of the transactions at merchant outlets happening digitally and only 5% of them are happening via UPI, hence we are targeting card payments to flow through our platform as well,” he said.