HDFC Bank has launched a POS machine called DigiPOS which will allow customers to pay via newer methods such as the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), BharatQR, SMS Pay and the PayZapp wallet, in addition to debit and credit cards. The bank added that it will be converting its entire network of PoS machines to DigiPOS without any investment by the merchants. SMS Pay is a payment option on the DigiPOS where merchants can initiate a payment to customers via SMS. For UPI and BharatQR payments, the POS machines will generate a QR code where customers can scan and pay, similar to Axis Bank and Innoviti Payments' solution Note that HDFC Bank has not enabled Aadhaar Pay and NFC on the DigiPOS machines. That's possibly due to the additional infrastructure needed to scan finger prints and the huge number of failures in the Aadhaar Pay system. However, the bank does not issue NFC debit and credit cards and hasn't built an acceptance infrastructure for it as well. "For contactless payments, the handsets have to be compatible. Right now only the high-end phones are NFC compatible. The merchant also has to be NFC compatible to accept payments. So this will need some time, till the handsets are affordable," Nitin Chugh, head of digital banking had told MediaNama back in 2015. This is slowly changing: Nokia's recent launch the Nokia 3 priced at Rs 9999 comes with NFC support, which is probably the cheapest phone right now Salman adds: However, this is slowly changing: Nokia's recent launch…
