Point-of-sale terminals yet to fire despite repeated nudges by RBI

It's important to note that unlike ATMs, the scheme is not advertised or visible to the general public

Imagine walking into a store near you and getting cash using your debit card on the ubiquitous point-of-sale (PoS) terminal. The idea behind the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) August 2009 initiative was to reduce the reliance on automated teller machines (ATMs) for small-ticket cashouts. This also signalled that cash will continue to linger despite digital modes of payments making strides.

Despite repeated central bank reminders, cash-out at PoS has not fired.

In FY09, we had 470,237 PoS terminals and 44,857 ATMs; in FY20, it reads 5.13 million and 234,357, respectively. The share of private banks in the deployed PoS