In the last few years, the point-of-sale (POS) industry has gone from strength to strength. There was a time, not very long ago, when the acronym POS conjured up images of a retail store, a computer and a printer that gave customers a printout of the final payment to be made. In fact, wherever there was any billing to be done, POS played an important role – be it a restaurant, petrol pumps or cinema halls.

Parallel to the POS ecosystem ran another ecosystem called the Automatic Identification and Data Capture or the AIDC ecosystem which was primarily a system based on scanners and a computer. Both the POS and the AIDC systems required a computer, but since the computer was part of the much larger IT industry, these two systems never managed to reap the benefits of the IT industry.

But with the retail industry in India growing at a rapid pace, the role of POS began to widen. Slowly but surely, both the AIDC and POS systems got integrated into the larger IT scheme of things and started to take rapid strides in the right direction. Today, the POS market in India is huge. In fact, we no longer define POS as Point of Sales, we prefer to call it Point of Service. Look at the spread and reach of the POS industry in modern, digitalised India. From the milk packet that gets delivered at our doorstep in the morning to newspapers, soaps, white goods to even vegetables, every transaction we do, every receipt we get, comes printed with a barcode. There’s no way we can escape the wide reach and acceptance of the POS industry. It has well and truly become a part of our existence.

In fact, it is estimated that an average active Indian encounters a POS-centric situation around 50 times in a day. No wonder, each and every aspect of our lives – be it personal, business, social or political is getting impacted by the POS industry.

ESY India which has been at the forefront of manufacturing world-class POS machines, scanners and printers is extremely bullish about the future of this industry. We believe that as our Aadhar Cards get linked to almost every aspect of our lives, the POS market in India is poised to grow exponentially in the coming years. To augment this growth process, ESY is planning to come out with POS Biometric machines that will make money transactions in India almost like child’s play. A gentle press of your thumb and the transaction will be done. In fact, another POS revolution that is waiting to happen in India is the POS EVM Machines revolution. Imagine the good things a biometric POS EVM machine can do to our democratic institutions. Besides making the election process extremely transparent and easy to execute, these machines can provide authorities with the exact data to remind people to exercise their franchise on voting day, improving voting percentages dramatically.

Let’s face it. The POS revolution in India is real. And it is here to stay. It’s here to change the lives of our citizens for the better. For ever.

Author: Dr. V. P. Sajeevan, CEO, ESY India