Decentro Adds a Voice to Its Offline QR with Soundbox Launch

Bengaluru, 04th November 2026: As the festive rush fills India’s counters, and as merchants wait to learn what accepting UPI will cost them, Decentro today launched its Soundbox range: a counter device that says “payment received” the moment money arrives. The range has two devices: the Static QR Soundbox and the Dynamic QR Soundbox with NFC and Keypad.

The launch is aimed squarely at the mid-tier markets across India where UPI is growing the fastest. Tier 2 and smaller towns now account for about 45% of UPI volumes, according to NPCI data, and an estimated 20 million merchants already use soundbox-type devices against an estimated 60 million+ small merchants in the country. In these markets, counters are busy, connectivity can’t be taken for granted, and a missed confirmation costs a sale.

The Static QR Soundbox is built for merchants who want something compact, dependable and easy to set up. It runs on 4G with 2G and optional Wi-Fi as backup, so confirmations keep coming even where the network is patchy. Payment alerts are available in English, Hindi, and multiple regional languages, so every merchant can hear them in the language they’re most comfortable with.

The Dynamic QR Soundbox is for merchants who want to do more at the counter. A built-in display shows a QR code generated for each transaction, so the amount is set at billing and nobody has to key it in. A keypad is built in, and with NFC the device also accepts tap-to-pay contactless payments on RuPay, Visa and Mastercard.

Both of these soundboxes are available immediately for merchants to book & purchase. The dynamic QR box currently supports UPI & the functionality to pay via cards is expected to go
live after another 2 months or so.

The devices arrive ready to run, with connectivity, platform and a one-year warranty included, and receive updates over the air, so new features and fixes reach a device without anyone
visiting the shop. That matters most where a service visit is hard to arrange across these small towns in India.

A model that fits the partner. Banks, fintechs, aggregators, marketplaces and other platforms can offer the Soundbox to their merchants in the way that suits them: sell the device outright, or
rent it out to them. The platform sets the merchant-facing terms and keeps the commercial flexibility.

Commenting on the launch, Rohit Taneja, Founder & CEO, Decentro, said: “India’s payments story is no longer about whether people will pay digitally, but about how reliably that value reaches the merchant at the last mile. Offline QR earned merchants’ trust because it is simple, but what it lacked was a way for the shop to hear that trust confirmed. The Soundbox closes that gap. Infrastructure that holds up when connectivity can’t be assumed matters first in smaller towns, but it is the standard every environment deserves, and it is the same thinking behind our work on offline verification.

Platforms decide which rails thousands of merchants run on, and the Soundbox makes that decision audible at every counter. We believe the next phase of fintech will be won by infrastructure that disappears into the everyday, where a shopkeeper simply hears ‘payment received’ and gets on with the next customer. We are looking to partner with large aggregators & brands to make this happen & reach a goal of 1 million soundboxes over the next 2+ years.”

Decentro is rolling out the Soundbox range to kiranas, grocery stores, quick-service restaurants, cafés, petrol pumps, salons, and neighbourhood retail, where payments are frequent, counters are busy and a quick confirmation makes the biggest difference. The company is targeting 1 million+ devices by the end of 2028, and is already in conversation with 5 partners on large-scale deployments. The company already has more than 5,000+ offline UPI QRs deployed & live across merchants as of now, just within the past 2 months of offline QR being launched.

With the Soundbox range, Decentro is taking its payments infrastructure from the API layer to the shop counter. As more merchants move to a faster, spoken and tap-ready way of getting paid, Decentro will keep building on the range, adding features over the air as merchant needs evolve, so that every business, from a neighbourhood store to a national chain, can run a simpler and more confident counter.