LAHORE: Point of sale (POS) system has become a necessity for businesses as it helps them to sell online, in person, or both and run the operations smoothly by unifying all sales, business operations and marketing initiatives in one place.

With its large cash-based retail economy, coupled with a vast unbanked population, Pakistan offers endless possibilities for investment and growth in the digital banking and payments industry.

One of the most important functions of a POS system is keeping track of all the products, across enterprise sales channels (in-store and online) so you know when it’s time to order specific products.

Team management software lets employers know when their employees are working and how they’re performing.

Your POS system should enable you to add employees, create and modify schedules, track weekly/overtime hours and analyse performance.

It is worth noting that the POS machines are installed by the manufacturers free of cost and charge a nominal fee per POS transaction. This is the reason that the POS equipment suppliers prefer to install their equipment in setups in stores with a large footprint of customers.

This is the reason that the POS regime is seen mostly in big cities, corporate and large stores. Smaller and medium stores are not offered this facility.

A Chinese-backed fintech company OPay saw it commercially viable to serve the smaller retailers around Pakistan.

“With its large cash-based retail economy, coupled with a vast unbanked population, Pakistan offers endless possibilities for

investment and growth in the digital

banking and payments industry,” said Ali Mubashar Kazmi, the president of OPay Pakistan.

He said at OPay POS terminals, added features enable a merchant to act as an ATM and become a bank for their area as these machines can be used to offer to their customers all branchless banking services ranging

from payments to deposits to withdrawal to lending

The unbanked population can’t even access the most basic financial services to invest in their businesses, limiting their potential.

“Our POS machines not only help document the economy, but also provide access

to the 80 percent financially excluded population of the country to small ticket loans,” he added.

Number of POS machines operating in Pakistan is limited to less than 100,000 while experts see a potential of at least half a million machines at current level of our economy. The Chinese entrant has installed about 10,000 machines.

Kazmi hoped that his company would be able to commission 200,000 machines out of the potential of half million.

The success of the Chinese model would force other competitors to add value to their machines.

The OPay is in the process of introducing credit cards for the poor as well as small loans for the unbanked and underserved bank depositors. After regulatory approvals they also intend to launch a digital wallet.

“If this happens, we may see a new era in microfinance where the loans would be disbursed on the basis of the potential of the loan seeker,” he said, adding that the POS machines give an exact idea of the average cash transactions on a daily basis and the lender could offer loans safely on a cash flow basis as the profit on that flow would also be determined by the machine.

Pakistan’s economy badly needs empowering its unbanked and underserved population to reduce our economic woes.

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