The next time you order a pizza in your office or home, you will be able to pay through your credit or debit card. HDFC Bank has launched 'mobile point of sale terminals' supported by CDMA technology in partnership with Reliance Infocomm and POS terminal manufacturer Schlumberger.

HDFC Bank has tied up with SangamDirectSM, a supermarket on phone from HLL, and with a franchisee of Pizza Hut. "With this, convergence is available not only to commercial organisations but also to retail customers. This technology also helps in reducing the costs for the bank," said HDFC Bank managing director Aditya Puri.

With this technology, banks can move their acquisitions to the smaller cities. "Currently, though there are a large amount of issuers but they are concentrated in the bigger cities," pointed Puri.

When a bank enters a new city for card acquisition, it has to set up a network access controller (NAC) system.

Merchants in smaller cities have to call up the cities where the NAC has been installed (which usually is an STD call) for clearing a card transaction, resulting in higher cost per transaction.

"A merchant in a town like Bhavnagar would have to make an STD call to another city. Banks would need to have at least 300 merchants to set up NAC in a city. Banks now do not have to invest in this infrastructure," said Reliance Infocomm's head - finance vertical Kishore Oka.

The costs on the transaction in this mobile POS would be low as both the merchant and the bank would be using a Reliance number.

Electronic payments, in order to grow substantially need security and convenience, pointed out Schlumberger's vice president (e-payments) Michel Leger.

HDFC Bank's head retail banking Neeraj Swaroop said the cost of mobile POS terminals is the same as that of the normal terminals at around Rs 20,000.

On the future of this mobile POS technology, Puri said, "All super markets will have to start home delivery. In any technology, users come up once they see the convenience. At one point of time one may also see these terminals in taxis too. This technology would also help in expanding the areas where the debit and credit cards can be accepted."

HDFC Bank is the largest deployer of POS terminals in the country with around 25,000 terminals across the country. The bank has revised downwards the number of POS terminals to be set up from 40,000 to 30,000 by the year-end. Swaroop said that around 1,500 POS terminals will be redeployed.