Losing pennies, the art of rounding off the paisa…

Indian Currency via https://pixabay.com/en/rupees-money-indian-currency-note-435450/

I’m not a expert when it comes to money matters, however I happen to have a habit for looking into the finer details of things, especially when someone hands me something, and even greater when I pay for something…

So to start, the context we are talking about here concerns the recent #demonetization drive in India.

Irrespective of the fact whether it is successful move or not, I’m highlighting one place where this clearly fails.. #cashlessPayment

Now how does this fails, you may wonder? Everybody got credit cards and almost anyone can get a digital wallet, to aid to the situation, digital POS systems are very easy to acquire.

The answer to all this is yes, however, what happens to the essential fact of rounding off the paise, the atomic unit of the Indian economy?

Most POS systems today, are exceedingly designed to round off the trialing paise to the next higher rupee,
i.e when you buy food at any quick service restaurants and the final bill amounts to Rs. 180.47,
However, note this is not the final payable amount! This amount is now rounded off to next higher rupee value, that’s Rs. 181.00.

This difference of Rs. 0.63, arises from the erstwhile problem of inflation and poorly designed payment systems.

Now consider the payment options, you can now either pay by cash and/or by card, however with the dawn of digital payment systems(basically credit cards) and its highly slow adaption by merchants, POS software and hardware makers treat digital payment as similar to cash, hence they force you to pay the difference in round-off value for no reason.

This problem is not only limited to POS systems with Add-on digital payment module, but rather with existing systems as well. Now this purely does not hold merit for newer digital payments method like e-wallets.

E-Wallets in India rose to fame with this exact issue in picture…

for reference only

Now the onus of solving this problem, clearly lies with the “Point-of-sale- (POS)” software providers in India.

for reference via https://pixabay.com/en/bookkeeping-accounting-taxes-615384/

Hence POS softwares, should be better equipped to handle such trivial issues, and should either the customer to choose his/her payment method before calculating the final billing amount.

Another solution to this issue could also be identified, by returning the difference in the rounding-off value to the payment gateway, which could then return it to the customer’s card/E-wallet.

I hope the Indian government, would take steps to curb this #blackmoney as well…!!

Do share your thoughts on this….