QPOS, a mini POS solution for small businesses in China, reportedly has secured RMB100 million (roughly $16m) in Series B funding. Li Yinghao, co-founder and COO of QPOS, confirmed with TechNode the fundraising without disclosing the target amount, saying it’s not completed yet.
Founded in March 2011, QPOS received its first funding from Sequoia China in early 2013. Feng Weiquan, co-founder and CEO of the company, was the GM for Greater China at MasterCard Worldwide.
The QPOS is low-cost — sold at a little more than $100 — and is accompanied with mobile apps that can generate analytics results for businesses. QPOS takes transaction-based commissions.
It had had 10,000 business clients as of January 2013, according to the company, with 30% being clothing stores. In October last year, a QPOS for female store owners were launched — most clothing stores are run by ladies.
Although so far no one is dominating the offline merchant-facing payment solution market in China, big guys in digital payments like Alibaba are aggressively entering it. With Alipay On-site, a solution enabling businesses to accept payments face-to-face from customers, Alibaba has had convenience store chains, department stores, taxi drivers, vending machine providers, and so on on board.
And the cash rich giants are moving even faster. In April 2013 Yaoyaozhaoche, a taxi app, reached its peak in terms of Android app downloads and became the leading player in China’s taxi app market, according to Wandoujia’s annual report. The app would reach partnership with QPOS for taxi fare payments in a couple of months. But the whole picture would change soon that Kuaidi and Didi, two taxi apps venture backed by Alibaba and Tencent respectively, would catch up and become the leading apps. Now the two apps have been integrated into their investors’ hugely popular flagship apps, and are subsidizing drivers and customers to encourage them to use their services and pay with mobile payment solutions provided by their investors — Alipay of Alibaba and WeChat Payment of Tencent.