New Delhi,  Smaller cities and towns have been in the forefront of the recovery in digital payments and transactions amid the pandemic, according to Manish Patel, Founder & CEO, Mswipe.

He is of the view that the speedy adoption of digital payments, especially QR payments, is on the back of the increased preference for contactless transactions due to social distancing norms.

"For overall digital transactions, east and north India are leading the recovery with digital payments at 75 per cent and 70 per cent of pre-Covid levels respectively, while south and west India are at 55 per cent and 54 per cent respectively. Tier 2, 3, 4 locations are driving the recovery across the country and closer to exceeding pre-Covid levels," Patel said.

The Mswipe CEO said the company has noted an increase in QR adoption, with transactions beating pre-Covid levels. QR payments have recovered fully to pre-Covid levels.

"Small merchants are also taking to contactless tap and pay transactions with adoption levels more than doubling from 5 per cent of transactions to 11 per cent of transactions in the small merchant category," he told IANS.

He said that recently Mswipe partnered with MyPinPad, a UK-based secure personal authentication solutions provider and Visa and with support of these global partners, the company will introduce a technology that will enable "true democratisation of payments and accelerate the contactless revolution in India, resulting in huge socioeconomic benefits".

On the recent launch of its product 'Bank Box', he said that the payment solution will "revolutionise" the digital payment landscape for MSMEs by ushering in the era of zero rental and zero MDRAA (Merchant Discount Rate) for POS (point of sale) and payment gateway card payments for small businesses.

Traditionally SMEs prefer accepting cash over cards since there are costs associated with ownership and transactions on POS terminals, Patel said. He noted that through Bank Box the company is helping MSMEs and merchants eliminate the cost of ownership.