UPI – A game changer for Vending machine industry in India
Vending Machines have become synonymous with convenience. Who does not like a quick bite of their favourite healthy snack or cold coffee at the touch of a button?
The Indian Vending Machine Market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 17.2% during the forecast period (2022-2028) according to a report by BlueWeave Consulting. Vending Machines have seen a tremendous increase in penetration and usage over the last 10 years. But the majority increase in usage has come after the introduction of UPI by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in 2016. UPI was introduced by NPCI to facilitate Inter bank transactions and to reduce the transaction time taken by the traditional online money transfer means like NEFT, RTGS, IMPS etc.
Fast forward to 2023 and UPI has become so commonplace, so ubiquitous that it is hard to imagine financial transactions without it in the daily life of an average Indian consumer. Various industry reports peg UPI to be the default mode of transactions for the Indian customer. Vending can’t be far behind. And Nutritap can vouch for this fact that the de-facto mode of transaction in Nutritap vending machines is UPI, accounting for ~ 99% of the transactions.
While Nutritap’s Vending machine can accept various modes of payments like Credit Cards, Debit Cards, Cash, UPI, Online Wallets, Meal Cards and Employee RFID cards, the ease of usage and the penetration that UPI brings is unparalleled.
While it looks almost obvious in the current context, there are some other underlying factors that have spurred the use of UPI and hence the tremendous acceptance of Vending machines across sectors over the past 7 years.
- 2016 – The phenomenally easy-to-use new Fintech product that NPCI introduced to the Indian market.
- 2016 end – Demonetisation spurring the use of digital payments.
- 2019 – Smartphone penetration in India crosses 500 Million users.
- 2020-22 – COVID-19 making it safer to transact digitally than using physical money.
- 2023 – Smartphone penetration in India crosses 1 Billion users.
Apart from the above factors, growth of Payment platforms and aggregators have made UPI omni-present in every smartphone in India.
UPI has been a boon for the Vending industry and for Nutritap in particular. One of the underlying contributing factors of the growth that Nutritap has achieved, as a Vending machine industry leader, is the advent and proliferation of UPI over the years.
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