Atos Worldline the company which processes one of three credit card transactions in India after its acquisition of Venture Infotek aims to grow its network of two lakh credit card accepting machines by 50% each year. Another payment service provider First Data Corporation which acquired ICICI Merchant Services from ICICI Bank last year has grown its network 60% in a year. Then there is the proposed three-way joint venture between SBI, Visa and Elavon Corporation also have ambitions to deploy half a million credit card acceptance machines.

Speaking to ToI, Marc-Henri Desportes, EVP, Atos said that he expects the share of electronic payments such as credit cards, net banking and mobile payments to grow sharply. "In India the share of electronic payments in total payments for personal consumption is around 3%. Considering that this ratio ranges between 15% to 30% and even 50% to other countries we expect electronic payments to grow to 15% of all transactions in five to ten years.

The business of merchant acquisition - the process of installing credit card swipe machines in stores - has seen a surge in activity in the last two years with specialized institutions coming in. In 2010, ICICI Bank farmed out its merchant acquiring business into a new company which it sold to First Data Corporation of the US for $80mn. Subsequently, Atos Worldline acquired card transaction processing company Venture Infotek for $ 100mn. This was followed by a three-way joint venture between State Bank of India, Visa and Elavon Corporation to set up a merchant acquiring business with a target of half a million pos machines.

After acquiring Venture Infotek which was promoted by Piyush Khaitan and Dhruv Khaitan, Atos has brought in its own CEO Sameer Nemavarkar who was earlier head of retail forex and remittances at Axis Bank. In addition to expanding the card business, Atos is looking at bring its other payments solutions including those in the internet payment space.

Desportes said that the government and Reserve Bank of India initiative to install mobile bank branches using point of sales terminals attached to a printer and communication device was a game changing initiative. "We are discussing with our banking partners, which way we can propose our services" said Desportes. Bankers are excited with the prospects of getting unbanked customers into the banking fold However, many bankers say that there is a minimum break-even level of transactions required to install POS machines.

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Atos origins payment expertise expands beyond the financial sector. According to Desportes the company has recently concluded a smart metering project for electric utilities in France and is working on a similar project in China. Smart metering involves collecting usage details automatically from meters and remitting them to the utility companies. It also provides solutions which help identify leakages in the power distribution system and bring down transmission and distribution losses.