Employee benefits services provider Sodexo has tied-up with point-of-sale (POS) terminal deploying company Innoviti Payments Solutions to expand the network of outlets where Sodexo is accepted digitally, reports ET Retail. The CEO of Sodexo Benefits and Rewards Services, India, Stephane Michelin told the publication that they're looking to convert about 55% of the paper vouchers they currently sell to digital vouchers by the end of August 2017. In March this year, Innoviti powered the launch of mobile-based Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payments at Reliance Retail stores through a QR-code interface. Reliance Retail operates 3,553 stores across 686 cities. Innoviti claims it processes over Rs 12,000 crore of payment transactions annually (primarily through its omni-channel payment platform uniPAY), including Rs 1,000 crore of credit (through its dealer trade credit platform smelending.com). Note that earlier this year, RBI said that it will not allow prepaid payment instruments (PPIs) in the form of paper vouchers, and that existing paper vouchers (such as those offered by Sodexo and Ticket Restaurant) shall not be valid beyond December 31, 2017. Following this, in May, Sodexo partnered with PoS provider Mswipe to make Sodexo’s Meal Card valid at some Mswipe merchants like grocery stores, restaurants, cafes and food delivery services. Manish Patel, CEO of Mswipe, told MediaNama that more than 30,000 merchants will be able to use Sodexo’s meal card in the first phase. Sodexo also has similar tie-ups with point of sales deploying entities such as Worldline, First Data and Pine Labs, whose terminals will accept Sodexo meal cards. Sodexo is accepted…
