Peculiarities of the post-COVID Era: POS Innovations to Flourish by 2026

Several customers' demand for a variety of contactless payment alternatives is triggering unprecedented growth. As per the new findings, the number of smart point-of-sale terminals is heading for a massive growth in the coming few years since retailers and consumers are increasingly embracing and adopting the financial and payment technology.

The coming of Covid-19 pandemic triggered massive increase in contactless payments (CPs) globally. This was due to the fact that people were put under serious lockdowns and encouraged to work from their homes. So people didn't have access to traditional payment systems including cash, credit and debit cards, money coins, cheques, etc.

Covid-19 plague soared the number of contactless payments system users

A good number of people started ordering for products and services via online market payments and they could pay using mobile money, cryptocurrency, QR Codes, and other CP alternatives. Most governments around the globe, healthcare institutions, and the World Health Organization, encouraged the public to adopt CPs to reduce the spread of the Covid-19 plague, a calamity that has so far claimed the lives of about 4.2 million people globally.

For instance, according to the report by MasterCard, due to the plague, 51% and above of Americans are deploying different CP alternatives such as Android Pay, etc., that is cleaner and more efficient than paying using paper money. The breakdown stat for customers using touch-free cards for purchasing the basic products and services is as follows: grocery takes 85%, pharmacy is 39%, retail is 38%, quick service restaurants is 36% and transit is 9%. 

Another cause for the growing use of contactless payments is the increasing worries over the cleanliness of signing at POS or making payments with banknotes. The study discovered that over 50% of the US customers fret about the standards of cleanliness of signature touchpads and over 72% of the customers choose to goof off signatures altogether.

Smart and soft POS devices to grow by 156%

Recently, a Juniper Research study discovered that the demand for POS systems is skyrocketing as features like analytics and loyalty info are able to be incorporated into the terminal itself.

Generally, it is estimated that the quantity of devices is set to soar to nearly 35 million by 2026 down from the current 13.7 mln in 2021, and this indicates a boom of nearly 156%.

Some of the pros of smart POS terminals over traditional POS devices include: decreased paper-load, enhanced rectification and tracking, heightens the image of your business, convenient for the consumer, unmatched customize capability, intermediary apps support smart terminals, effective incorporation with peripherals, better for inventory management, they give every day/weekly/monthly reports showing important monetary indicators that gives you a picture of your business.

Since the customers' desire for conducting digital transactions go on to multiply, businesses and the fintech sector throughout the world will continue seeking for sophisticated payment methods. Therefore, if the trend continues like this, the smart POS marketplace will register a significant growth.