Over the last 4 weeks or so, I have been noticing an interesting trend – a lot of small retailers are opting for this device from Paytm which just does 1 thing:
Broadcasts the UPI payment confirmation message in the speaker with a loud alert sound !
And retailers are paying ~Rs. 650/year for this system.
Why is this a great problem to solve? Two reasons:
- Lately, UPI has become too unpredictable. For a shop with considerable number of customers visiting and transacting, you definitely need a confirmation which is beyond ‘show me the screen’ (SMS sucks).
There is a serious pain involved here and this device definitely captures that beautifully.
- Most importantly, many shops are managed by employees while the shop owner visits only once a while. The hack so far has been that once the payment is done, the employee takes a pic of the payment screen, in case there is an issue.
This device (called, Paytm Sound box) solves for the two big problem statements and is, what I’d say an example of first-principle thinking.
Since the device supports BHIM UPI, shopkeepers will start removing other options (for e.g. that QR code in pic is of Shivakumar who runs his medical store and has replaced all other UPI payment options with this device) and for sure, this is going to help Paytm increase its UPI market share (and still sell the device at a decent margin).
Talking about UPI device experiments, PhonePe too tried doing something ambitious with its calculator + PoS, which I am not too sure worked well (quite a few shops just used it as a ‘free wala calculator’).
Thinking Aloud: WHY IS SAREGAMA not joining this bandwagon? I mean, Radio + UPI ! Whattay combo it’d be 🙂
