Idly meets NFC, iKaaz partners with Adigas to implement NFC for payments

This is a classic case of the traditional meets digital. iKaaz and Adigas have joined hands to rollout cashless payments at the chain of traditional South Indian restaurants run by Adigas. The joint initiative would be first launched at Brahmin’s Coffee Bar located in Basavanagudi, South Bangalore, and then across all the other restaurants of Adigas.

iKaaz and Adigas will give customers NFC cards which can be loaded with Rs. 100 to R.s 10,000 with annual transaction limit of Rs. 1lakh -- the cards will be linked to customers’ mobile phones.

Soma Sundaram, Founder and CEO of iKaaz, commented, “The NFC based Tap and Pay technology plays a crucial role to bridge the problems faced by restaurant owners and customers with respect to change issues, and long queues at the counter, etc. We believe that the solution will work particularly well in places where there is a long queue to make payments, especially at food joints. This technology brings in a lot of convenience as one can avoid the consequent delay in making payments, and also because it eliminates the need to carry cash.”

Adigas is not an unknown name if you live in southern part of the country. Known for its traditional food and ambience, it is one of the most crowded eating out places for the middle class in South India. Adigas has joined hands with iKaaz, a NFC-based mobile payments company, which provides Tap & Pay solutions as convenient and secured method to make payments. iKaaz had also expanded in Eastern & Western Africa earlier this year.

Related Read: iKaaz processes 250K transactions every month, plans to foray into B2C segment next year in India

Radhakrishna Adiga of Adigas added, “We often find it difficult to provide loose change to customers. Coins of smaller denominations like Re 1 and 2 are becoming scarce and sourcing them from regular channels like banks and the RBI is cumbersome. Sometimes we are forced to source loose change from agents who charge around 10% commission for the coins. The solution provided by iKaaz will eliminate change issues to a large extent and based on the feedback from customers; we would like to extend iKaaz’s solution to Adigas’ food joints and restaurants across Bengaluru.”

Way before Apple Pay made the NFC payments sexy, iKaaz was betting on NFC technology. It is an innovative mobile payments platform targeted at merchants in emerging markets to enable them to extend cashless transactions to their customers. They are the pioneers of introducing the affordable NFC technology in India and providing a comprehensive suite of end-to-end mobile payments solutions that include a feature-rich mobile wallet, an innovative yet cost-effective mPOS (mobile Point of Sale) and a robust payments platform.

This will be a good starting point because if iKaaz manages to sign up enough retailers to accept NFC, it has a fighting chance of enabling India's micropayment on mobile. The company needs to solve its chicken and egg problem, because retailers won't sign up if users aren't using it. Users won't jump in if retailers aren't using it at a scale. Just one or two retailers accepting NFC won't cut the deal. Only time will tell if other offline retailers follow suit.

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