Digital payment startups in the point-of-sales (PoS) space, such as Ezetap, Mswipe Technologies, Innoviti Payments and Mosambee, have seen demand slow sharply as supply chain disruptions during the ongoing lockdown make delivery of existing orders and fresh sales difficult.
Most customers are either closed for business, operate with a limited workforce or have put orders on hold. Some are experiencing disruptions in procuring devices from China and other countries.
Ezetap’s devices are stuck in transit from China, while it is unable to clear pending order book because of restrictions on movement due to the lockdown.
“China has slowly started opening up but the devices aren’t reaching us due to customs and clearance issues. Even internally, in India, the logistics problems continue,” said Ezetap CEO Byas Nambisan. The company is unable to sell PoS devices as its salesforce cannot operate, Nambisan said, adding if the situation does not ease up, the ongoing quarter will be tough.
Mosambee, on the other hand, had stocked up on PoS devices for two quarters, but is seeing a slowdown in demand during the quarter. It has a pending order book of 20,000-25,000 that has not been fulfilled.
“In April, no new sales have happened because of shut shops and mobility restrictions. The impact of the drop in demand will be seen in May and June. Once our teams are out on the field, we expect new orders to pick up and this uptick will be visible around end June or July,” said Sameer Chugh, co-founder, Mosambee.
Innoviti, which focuses on mid-to-large enterprises, is not doing new installations as most of its customers are shut. The company has 4,500-5,000 pending orders for PoS terminals.
“The new order book is dependent on how large enterprises restart business. For one quarter, we don’t expect new orders and close the existing order book at best. There will be an impact on revenue,” said Rajeev Agrawal, CEO of Innoviti, which gets 25-30% of its revenue from deployment of PoS devices.
Mswipe, which aims to bring small merchants within the fold of digital payments, said deployment of PoS devices has halted completely as the country is shut.
“We will have to wait and watch how the government opens up the economy,” said Manish Patel, CEO of Mswipe.