Cashfree launches a free Android app enabling Indian direct-to-consumer brands to accept various offline payments via smartphones, simplifying payment processes at events, pop-ups, and temporary sales channels.
Indian direct-to-consumer brands are finding that a business built online often needs to sell offline as well. Craft fairs, pop-ups, exhibitions and temporary counters can all become meaningful sales channels, but they also create a basic problem: how to take payment quickly without investing in equipment that may sit unused for months at a time.
Cashfree is pitching its softPOS app as one answer to that problem. According to the company, the Android app turns an ordinary smartphone into a checkout point that can handle UPI QR codes, contactless card taps, payment links, wallets, and EMI or buy-now-pay-later options, while also allowing staff to record cash sales in the same system. The app is free to download, with transaction charges governed by the merchant’s pricing agreement.
The appeal is in the simplicity. Cashfree says merchants need only a compatible Android phone running Android 6.0 or later for most functions, with Android 8.0 or later required for NFC card payments. That means a brand can use a device it already owns rather than buying or renting a separate card machine, arranging a SIM connection, or managing another terminal at every event. For businesses that sell in person only a few times a year, that difference can be material.
Cashfree also says the same merchant account can be used for online and offline collections, which matters for D2C brands operating across websites, marketplaces, WhatsApp orders and physical stalls. Its WooCommerce plug-in ties online sales into the same dashboard, while softPOS lets a seller generate payment links for customers who prefer to pay on their own phones. The company says this creates a single view of orders, settlements and refunds, reducing the need for separate reconciliation across channels.
For events with more than one staff member, Cashfree says the system supports a multi-agent setup in which each seller logs in on a separate phone and collections are tracked individually in the dashboard. That can be useful at busy fairs and retail counters, where owners want to know who collected what without manually matching receipts at the end of the day. In practice, the broader trend is clear: as Indian D2C brands expand beyond the website, payment tools are being asked to follow them everywhere.
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