Pine Labs launches AllTap app to turn phone into payment acceptance device

With AllTap, small merchants who aren't ready to invest in a traditional point-of-sale terminal can immediately start accepting digital payments on their NFC-enabled smartphone

Fintech unicorn Pine Labs, known for its point-of-sale (PoS) machines, has launched AllTap, a feature-rich app that can significantly accelerate digital payments adoption in India. 

With AllTap, small merchants can immediately start accepting digital payments on their NFC (near-field communication)-enabled smartphone without the need for any additional hardware. The move would help PineLabs to take on players such as Paytm, PhonePe and Google Pay which are also wooing small merchants.

While the ongoing pandemic propelled the adoption of digital payments in India, a large and critical segment of small entrepreneurs are still untouched by digitization. Pine Labs AllTap addresses this key segment especially small merchants, home entrepreneurs, street vendors, hawkers and cab drivers, who are not ready to invest in a traditional point-of-sale (PoS) terminal to accept digital payments.

 

“We heard from small merchants, taxi drivers, self-employed individuals, tuition-givers, and several other solopreneurs, who wanted a simple digital payments acceptance solution,” said B. Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs. “These small merchants (include) people who are operating out of their homes and running tiny businesses, and they want to tap the 800 million debit-card holders in India.”

Rau said the AllTap comes with a cutting-edge contactless payments technology and requires no additional hardware for merchants to start accepting digital payments. Their NFC-enabled smartphone is now a payments acceptance device. Rau said Pine Labs AllTap has tremendous potential to bridge the digital divide not only in India but also in other markets. “We will be the first company which will go out into the market, wherein you can now accept debit card and credit card on a regular NFC Android phone,” said Rau.

Using the Pine Labs AllTap, merchants can convert their NFC-enabled smartphone into a payment acceptance device in minutes. They can avail a host of additional features such as converting a transaction into Pay Later EMIs to increase sales. AllTap is powered by Pine Labs’ robust payment infrastructure which is already used by over 150,000 merchants. The company said the ‘tap and pay’ feature within the app is secure and is certified by PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC), RuPay, Visa, Mastercard and Amex.

“With AllTap, we are offering merchants a robust PCI SSC-compliant Contactless Payments on COTS (CPoC) solution. This ensures all tap and pay transactions are fully secure,” said Sanjeev Kumar, chief technology officer at Pine Labs. “Our PCI SSC-CPoC listing underwent an extensive audit and certification from PCI SSC and leading networks Visa, RuPay, Mastercard, and Amex.”

 

Pine Labs AllTap addresses several pain points of small merchants. Merchant can now switch to contactless digital payment, accept digital payments acceptance during door-step delivery. It reduces the checkout time delays through quick tap-and-go payments. The company said the app requires little documentation for the digital onboarding of merchants.

Last December, Pine Labs raised an undisclosed funding round led by billionaire hedge fund manager Stephen Mandel-founded Lone Pine Capital, taking the valuation of the Noida-based firm to over $2 billion. This made it the most valued fintech company in the country after Paytm and Walmart-owned PhonePe.

The digital payments space in India is expected to rise five-fold to reach $1 trillion by 2023, and would be led by growth in mobile payments, according to a report by financial services company Credit Suisse.