MUMBAI, MAY 17: Three months after the Reserve Bank of India approved guidelines for smart cards usage in India, ePOS Services Pvt Ltd has announced plans to facilitate transactions using smart cards, becoming the first company in the country to do so. The firm, a joint venture between the Bangalore-based Equifax Venture Infotek and US-based World Wide Smartnet, said it would said set up 30,000 point of sale (POS) terminals in the next three years at various cities. The company has got an investment of Rs 30 crore from Global Internet Ventures (GIV), a venture fund promoted by the Verifone founder William Melton. GIV has a corpus of $ 150 million targeted at investments in China and India, and this is the fund's first investment in India. Melton who addressed a press conference in the city on Wednesday said the fund would consider investments in IT-enabled services and specifically, companies with international connections. ePOS, for instance, plans to eventually provide end-to-end smart card payment solutions globally. The risk to banks issuing smart cards is lower compared to credit cards where risk of bad debts is fairly high. The card also reduces transaction costs through increased volumes by facilitating credit, debit and smart card transactions. While the smart card itself can function as all three, the card readers being installed can work with existing credit and debit cards as well, chairman Giri Khatod said. The company has already installed 432 terminals in Mumbai and plans to set up 2,500 additional terminals within the next two months. "Eighty-five per cent of the merchants surveyed have agreed to avail our services. Services like utility bill payment, loyalty programme and supply chain integration will shortly be added," managing director Anil Sinha said. The first smart cards will be issued by IDBI Bank from May 22 at Renukot in Uttar Pradesh. It will be launched in Mumbai on June 15, according to one of the directors L J Prashanth. Sinha said the company would announce relationships with more banks soon. "Equifax Venture Infotek serves 10 of the 13 payment card banks in India and we are in talks with them for issuing smart cards," he added. The firm is targetting a revenue of Rs 60 crore in three years. Unlike credit cards which are used mainly for high value transactions, smart card terminals will be installed even at small merchant establishments. The company will target these merchants who are currently outside the electronic payment system loop. The cost of the terminal will be shared between the merchant and the bank.
