BackAtos moves CCI against US-based VeriFone
Atos in its complaint to CCI says VeriFone was misusing its dominant position in the point-of-sale market
Premium(Ramesh Pathania/Mint)
New Delhi: India’s antitrust watchdog has registered a case against the local arm of US-based electronic payments company VeriFone Systems Inc. in a dispute over software upgrades.
VeriFone manufactures point-of-sale, or POS, machines that are used to swipe credit and debit cards at shops and restaurants.
A Competition Commission of India (CCI) official said the watchdog received a complaint from Atos Worldline (India) regarding software upgrades for such machines. Atos India is the local arm of France’s Atos SA, which makes software for POS machines.
“In its complaint, Atos has said that VeriFone is no longer supplying the software upgrade code, which is required for software upgrades to machines that are in use," he said, requesting anonymity. “For allowing software upgrades, VeriFone now wants companies to sign a contract, whose terms, Atos claims, are restrictive."
CCI will now establish whether the case is fit for investigation.
An email query sent on Wednesday and a text message sent on Thursday to an Atos spokesperson based in Mumbai remained unanswered.
“VeriFone is confident in the fairness of its business practices," said Josephine Ong, VeriFone’s marketing executive based in Singapore, in response to an email query.
According to the CCI official, Atos in its complaint has said that VeriFone was misusing its dominant position in the POS market.
“VeriFone has not done a survey to answer this question," Ong said in response to an email question enquiring about the company’s share of the POS market in the country.
The global POS software industry is expected to reach $3.2 billion (around ₹ 16,640 crore today) in 2014, according to a June report by technology research firm TechNavio. The hardware POS market is likely to be $31.5 billion in that time, it said.
Key vendors dominating this market are First Data Corp., Ingenico SA, Pax Global Technology Ltd and VeriFone Systems, according to TechNavio.
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