How Scan And Pay Is Facilitating Digital Payments
Scan and pay offers gained popularity post the demonetization incident, and post the pandemic, it just caught up with the Indian consumers like wildfire. Everyone from big retailers to small shopkeepers started offering the scan and pay option due to its simplistic nature, ease of use, and zero investment requirements.
It’s safe to assume that in a country like India where credit card proliferation is still low compared to its western counterparts, scan and pay offers have emerged as the best option to pay for goods and services.
What are Scan and Pay Offers?
It’s a simple process wherein a consumer scans a QR code using their smartphones to make digital transactions. It could be done through any of the digital wallets or via UPI that works across all banking and card networks. All one needs is a clearly visible and working QR code and a smartphone capable of reading the information stored within that code, and it’s done.
How Does it Work?
Paying via QR codes happens by direct bank debits. Neither the consumers nor the merchant is required to share any banking information such as account number, CVV, etc. to make the transactions happen. Once the code has been scanned, money gets directly debited to the bank account information stored within the QR code; thus, making it one of the safest ways to transact without the risk of theft or online fraud from taking place.
Now that we have dived a little bit into Scan and Pay offers and the way it works. Let’s look at a few of the foremost benefits that it offers to businesses!
Empowers Small Business Owners
The best part about this is that it offers even small business owners and shopkeepers to play at par with the bigger retail giants out there. Unlike earlier when POS machines were required to accept card-based payments; the shift towards code-based payments by consumers means that business owners no longer need to invest in any expensive hardware and can start accepting digital payments by simply linking their account details to a QR code, printing the code, and putting it up somewhere consumers can easily scan the code to make payments. That’s it, there is no need to invest in expensive hardware anymore.
Safe and Secure
Since all transactions take place via direct bank transfers, and neither party needs to share any additional details while transacting, it’s one of the safest modes of payment. Moreover, since everything is end-to-end encrypted there is almost no chance that any unauthorized person or system could gain access to the data being shared.
Safer than Cash
Transacting physical cash comes with some inherent risks, such as theft, misplaced notes, etc. Moreover, a business or an individual is required to store that money when carrying it on his person. This makes it a highly insecure mode of transacting for goods and services. Further, businesses also need to invest money in getting additional manpower to handle, store and transfer all of that money to be deposited to the bank which adds to the overall overhead costs for the business.
Buy Now Pay Later
Businesses can offer consumers the option to Buy Now Pay Later on purchased goods and services. Since all digital transactions leave a trail, they can be traced back to individual consumers to extend these kinds of offers. Money gets automatically deducted from the consumer’s bank account at set intervals. With cash, this was hardly possible because it wasn’t a feasible option to put out such offers for cash-based payments.
Scan and Pay offers are the way forward for all businesses—big or small. There has been a paradigm shift in the way consumers want to pay, and most people prefer to pay digitally rather than in cash these days. Therefore, if a business is to succeed, then it would need to evolve with the changing times and shift its focus from legacy payments to more modern secure methods of conducting day-to-day transactions.
