Many people complain that cashiers decline Apple Pay even though their stores have advertised support for Apple’s payment service.
I’ve come across the same experience with HDFC Bank’s PayZapp mobile wallet.
The cashier at a restaurant in my neighborhood told me they hadn’t started accepting PayZapp although there was a “PayZapp Accepted” sticker on his till. When I pressed him, he told me I could pay with PayTM instead.
And it’s not only standalone stores with poorly-trained employees.
I had a repeat of the same experience at the local outlet of the global sandwich QSR chain Subway. The front door of this QSR sported the PayZapp sticker but the cashier diverted me to PayTM, saying he didn’t know how to accept a PayZapp payment.
For reasons highlighted in HDFC Bank’s PayZapp Ends My Bill Payment Woes, PayZapp is my preferred mobile wallet. So, after getting rebuffed in my two attempts to use it, I decided to pushback on the next merchant who diverted me from PayZapp to PayTM.
This happened a few days later at an office supplies store near my office. Its till had both mVisa and PayTM QR codes. I’d heard that PayZapp works wherever mVisa does, so I told the cashier I’d like to pay with PayZapp. He appeared blank and told me he didn’t know what he needed to do to accept a PayZapp payment.
Because I’d resolved not to take no for an answer, I told the cashier, “As long as you have an mVisa QR Code, you don’t need to do anything else to accept a PayZapp payment”. I was only guessing because I’d never paid via mVisa before but I decided to give it a try. I fired up the PayZapp app, scanned the mVisa QR code and tapped the APPROVE button. Within seconds, I got an in-app message and the cashier received an SMS message, which confirmed that the payment had gone through successfully.
My guess that an mVisa merchant didn’t have to do anything extra to accept PayZapp proved to be right.
If cashiers are still declining PayZapp, there could be two reasons:
- The marketing professional in me suspects that there’s a last mile communication gap in spreading the word about PayZapp compared to PayTM. As a result, when a customer demands to pay with PayZapp, the hapless cashier doesn’t know what to do and tries to get rid of the monkey on his shoulder by diverting the customer to PayTM, which he knows is an alternative mobile payment
- The payments professional in me suspects that it’s cheaper for a merchant to accept PayTM compared to PayZapp. So merchants have a vested interest in diverting customers to PayTM.
Either way, PayZapp loses business and gifts away payment volumes to its competitor PayTM in these situations.
On a side note, PayZapp also loses business in many other situations like
- It’s not at all accepted by some merchants e.g. Uber and my electricity utility
- It’s no longer accepted due to technical reasons e.g. SonyLiv, and
- Its loyal customers are hijacked by targeted offers from competitors for payments that they’d otherwise make with PayZapp e.g. mobile phone bills.
While PayTM may not be the sole beneficiary of PayZapp’s loss in them, I thought these usage scenarios merited a mention for the sake of completeness.
Here’s a lesson for Payment Service Providers: Bring everyone in the merchant’s payment acceptance chain – especially cashiers – up to speed on how your product works. Otherwise, you risk losing business to more visible competitors – even if they don’t offer cashback.