It’s Razorpay vs Pine Labs, online and offline

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Editor's note: The humble point-of-sale machine has come a long way over the past few years. From a device that scanned credit and debit cards, the modern version has a touchscreen and can process multiple modes of payment, offer credit and even consolidate bills for a retailer.  A decade ago, retailers would have to shell out anywhere between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000 to buy a PoS machine and pay a few thousand rupees as maintenance charges. Similarly, online businesses would have to wait weeks for their banks to approve a payment gateway service on their website.  The costs of setting up a payments channel, be it a PoS device or a payment page, have reduced by a large extent. Today, you can buy a PoS machine for as little as Rs 2,500 or set up a card-accepting app on your mobile phone within minutes. If you are an online business, it takes only a few minutes to sign up for a payments aggregator service and your website can start accepting money within hours. Besides, an aggregator can bundle a bunch of …