New PoS deployment is expanding at a slow rate since the days of demonetization in the fiscal year 2023–2024, according to the data from the Reserve Bank of India.

Additionally, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) systems are growing in popularity among customers and retailers for the level of convenience it comes with, in the face of debit cards for cashless transactions.

Although businesses and merchants continue to offer additional point-of-sale (PoS) terminals in hopes to accept all forms of payments from their customers, the preference is still leaning towards QR code-based UPI transactions due to the growing use of credit cards.

The deployment of new PoS terminals have grown by 14 percent or 8.9 million in the course of March 2023 and 2024, approximately half the rate of 28 percent and 29 percent in the two years prior.

In the meantime, throughout the past two years, the use of QR codes for UPI payments via services like PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm has increased.

These QR-code stickers have made an appearance at every place of business, from street corner stores to drivers of cars.

Nearly 160 million debit card transactions were made at merchant locations in March, down 32 percent from 237 million the same month last year, according to transaction statistics from the RBI.

Meanwhile, UPI merchant transactions rose from 4.82 billion to 8.30 billion, a 72% increase.

The country's digital payments ecosystem is growing thanks to UPI's fee-free transactions, but banks are suffering because of the drop in debit card usage, which is reducing their earnings from the payments industry.

In the meantime, the exponential rise in credit card usage has somewhat offset the decline in debit card swipes. In India, there are already over 100 million credit cards in circulation; in the previous three years, this number has nearly doubled.

RuPay credit cards can now be linked to UPI thanks to the RBI, however the number of cards in use is still very small. Card readers are still useful for major retailers since transactions typically involve huge tickets.