Oil Marketers Eye Over 50% Of Retail Sales In Cashless Mode By March

Mumbai: Bharat Petroleum on Monday said cashless transactions at its outlets have jumped to 26 per cent after November 8 when high value notes were banned, from 10 per cent time before and expects at least half of all transactions to turn cashless by March.

Retail sale of oil products -- petrol, diesel, CNG/PNG and LPG -- in volume terms account for around 7.3 trillion transactions per annum, according to BPCL.

"We hope by end March, all the state-run oil marketers expect over 50 per cent of the retail transactions to be in cashless mode carried out through loyalty cards, debit/credit, e-wallets, or even NEFT etc. After the demonetisation announcement on November 8, non-cash payments have crossed 26 per cent at our pumps," BPCL executive director (retail) George Paul said here today.

Towards achieving this target, BPCL today tied up with SBI, HDFC Bank, and some other major banks to install PoS terminals apart from joining hands with Paytm, FreeCharge, Oxigen, Reliance Jio, SBI Buddy, and Fino for enabling mobile-wallet transactions at its retail outlets.

Paul said the three state-run oil marketing companies together have 5,3000 pumps and over 78,000 LPG agencies. These outlets together clock daily transactions worth Rs 500 crore (petrol), Rs 450 crore (diesel & CNG) and Rs 50 crore (LPG), which in volume terms work out to be 7.2-7.3 trillion transactions per day.

Before the noteban, BPCL was doing only around 10 per cent daily transactions cashless across the country, which was worth only Rs 50 crore.

In Maharashtra, the share of cashless transaction is close to 23.75 per cent for all OMCs, Paul said, adding in Mumbai, 54.53 per cent of transactions at its retail outlets are cashless.

Across the state, the cashless transaction for BPCL is around 32 per cent of its total sales, he added.

BPCL has installed PoS machines at all its filling stations in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane and Raigad district, Paul said.

He also said since the pumps were allowed to dispense cash, over 3,000 pumps together have distributed around Rs 155 crore to customers since the note ban announcement.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)