India’s pioneering Payments Solution provider, Oxigen Services (India) Pvt. Ltd was felicitated with an “Order-of-Merit Award” at the 40th Skoch Summit by Mr. S. Ramadorai at the International Convention Hall, BSE, Dalal Street, Mumbai, held on 11th & 12th June 2015. Oxigen was awarded in recognition of its cutting-edge ‘Oxigen Innovation project’ that led to the development of a Point Of Sale (PoS) device to aid Financial Inclusion.
Pramod Saxena, CMD Oxigen Services commented, “This is a moment of great honor and pride for us, as our months of research and hard work have been acknowledged. The whole idea of the product was inspired by major challenges of banking access for the mainstream Bottom of Pyramid population. The innovation of our unique Point of Sale device coupled with a biometric linked with Aadhaar and the Oxigen Wallet is a move towards creating a payment system in rural areas and enabling financial empowerment. We thank the esteemed jury for the Skoch Award which recognizes our effort in this direction and makes us more determined towards realizing this mission.”
In India, although 130 million Jan Dhan accounts have been opened, yet the number of actual transacting accounts is low as the account holders need to travel from distant places to the bank or BC locations to transact. On the other hand, over 100 million RuPay cards have been issued but there is no card acceptance infrastructure to transact as ATMs are virtually non-existent in villages. Based on the above mentioned learning, Oxigen developed a strategy towards implementing the Financial Inclusion objectives of the Government of India in a cost efficient and practical manner. The broad framework of this strategy is drawn from some of the key initiatives taken by the government in the last several years viz.
- Technology integration using Aadhaar network and integration
- Government subsidies & cash transfers
- Providing access to banking services
- The inability of banks to set up brick and mortar branches in rural areas
Within the above framework, Oxigen developed a robust strategy to address these issues. This centered on developing a universal device that could handle multiple functions and at the same time be cost effective. Consequently, it came up with a unique solution that now focuses on creating a powerful rural payment ecosystem in an interoperable environment. Oxigen introduced a Point of sales device that has the capability of being the core of a powerful rural payments ecosystem while addressing the challenges faced in the PMJDY, Rupay card acceptance and DBT cash transfers to beneficiary accounts and enabling their withdrawals.
Post implementation, the Oxigen business model was able to successfully complete RBI cash-in/cash-out pilot using Biometric (Aadhaar) enabled PoS in over 80 villages in Odisha and Bihar.
The Telco, Bank and form factor agnostic model became the first non-bank to connect to NPCI and reach top position in total tranx (1.3 Million+). It also became the first to deploy e-KYC at retail on its POS/Web infrastructure. Also differentiating it from similar projects by peers is the innovative model’s readiness to meet the Government’s objective of “Direct Benefit Transfer” and the low cost GPRS PoS that is customized for Rural deployment.
