Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. wants to squeeze three pieces of India’s payments hardware into one and sell it at a price affordable to the country’s smallest merchants, Manmeet Singh, India business head of automotive, internet of things, connectivity and broadband at Qualcomm India, told Mint.
The US chipmaker has introduced a new integrated payments device that combines a point-of-sale (POS) terminal, a dynamic QR code, and a soundbox, targeting the mass market at a price closer to a soundbox than to a conventional card machine, said Singh.
“We found that there is a space here to bring a new device. And that’s what we are working on with our partners,” said Singh.
India's digital payments ecosystem has evolved from a predominantly card-led market to one in which the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), QR codes, and soundboxes are ubiquitous among small merchants.
The India POS Terminals market size is expected to grow from 37.08 billion units in 2025 to 41.27 billion units in 2026 and is forecast to reach 70.39 billion units by 2031 at 11.30% compound annual growth rate over 2026-2031, according to a report by Mordor Intelligence.
Annual transaction volume expanded from just 20 million transactions in FY17 to over 241.62 billion transactions in FY26, representing an almost 12,000‑fold surge in transaction volume, showed a Press Information Bureau release in April. Transaction value also surged nearly 4,500-fold, from ₹0.07 trillion in FY17 to approximately ₹314 trillion in FY26.
The bet is part of Qualcomm’s broader push to diversify beyond smartphones, with the company looking to expand its IoT business across sectors including payments, automotive, and connected devices.
“IoT is one of the big portions of the revenue which we are targeting, and that’s where the expansion is,” Singh said. On Wednesday, Qualcomm partnered with Brandworks to launch the first such device.
Last October, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Qualcomm chief executive Cristiano Amon held high-level discussions in New Delhi focusing on artificial intelligence, semiconductor manufacturing, and digital innovation in India.
One device, three functions
Qualcomm's new device can accept card payments, generate dynamic QR codes and announce incoming payments through an integrated soundbox. It is being built on a low-memory real-time operating system (RTOS), rather than Android, to keep hardware requirements—and therefore costs—down.
“The idea was, how do we bring the memory to a very low footprint? So, you bring the real-time OS, RTOS. You put all those applications, security, everything, on the RTOS-based system,” Singh said.
The target price is central to the pitch. “Our target is that it should be closer to a soundbox, rather than POS machines,” Singh said, without disclosing further details. Soundboxes start at ₹1,500-2,000, while POS machines start at ₹8,000-10,000.
That could open up the card-payment functionality of a POS terminal to smaller merchants who have so far preferred QR payments because of the lower cost.
“The main hindrance was price point. So, even if it’s a small retailer, if he has a device that can still do credit card payment, which can act as a soundbox, and he does not need to paste QR codes all over the place, and can dynamically generate different QR codes,” Singh said.
Dynamic QR codes could also make it easier for merchants to track individual transactions, particularly in busy stores, he said. While dynamic QR is available on certain devices, the functionality generally comes at a high price point.
The company is deliberately designing the device for smaller merchants rather than limiting it to large retailers.
“If larger merchants have 10 machines and they have to go to the front of the machine, the amount of sales they do over a day, they can justify the hardware cost. The idea was to target the mass market,” Singh said.
The device could also find a market among larger retailers that currently deploy multiple POS terminals.
“But for them also, it makes sense that instead of adding five of those devices, I will add five of these devices. We can do all the stuff. We can still do credit card payments.”
Local manufacturing ecosystem
Qualcomm is not planning to manufacture or assemble the devices itself. Instead, it is building an ecosystem of Indian module makers, original design manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers around its technology.
It supplies the core chipset, software, security and positioning technology, while Indian partners build the modules and final devices.
“From design to manufacturing, everything is in India. The software, certifications, everything. It’s completely India,” Singh said.
The soundbox supply chain spans several layers. Qualcomm provides the chipset, software and security technology, while module makers build the communication modules. Original design manufacturers make the hardware and printed circuit boards, original equipment manufacturers design the final product, and electronics manufacturing services companies handle assembly. The finished devices are then certified and sold under the OEM’s brand.
Singh said Qualcomm is working with Indian partners across these layers to build the ecosystem locally.
This is important for Qualcomm because the payments hardware market has traditionally relied heavily on imported components and devices. He said Qualcomm is working with multiple Indian partners to develop the ecosystem rather than relying on a single manufacturer.
Qualcomm is also adding features that could push the device beyond payments.
One is Global Positioning System tracking, aimed partly at fintech companies that rent soundboxes and other payment devices to merchants. Another is on-device AI, including automatic speech recognition, allowing the device to process certain voice queries without sending them to the cloud.
Soundboxes are typically deployed by fintech/payment companies such as Paytm and PhonePe, with merchants paying rentals, and tracking matters to recover and recollect those devices.
The broader ambition is to make the new device a replacement for several categories of payment hardware. “If you can bring all these things, then this is the category which probably is going to replace not just the POS, but the soundbox also,” Singh said.