The contactless technology momentum doesn’t only apply to the ever increasing spending as new research from analyst firm Berg Insight predicts that nearly 80% of the world’s POS terminals will be contactless within the next four years.
2016 was a strong year for contactless infrastructure as the analyst firm is predicting that shipments of POS terminals will reach 16.1 million worldwide this year.
European and American markets were the strongest with over 90% of POS terminals shipped featuring NFC. Around the world, almost three out of every five (17.9%) POS terminals shipped in 2016 included NFC.
Berg Insight also identified Brazil, Turkey and China as other markets with a strong interest in the contactless terminals.
Berg Insight projects the global installed base of NFC-ready POS terminals will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.9 percent to 86.9 million units in 2020, meaning 77% of the world’s POS terminals will be NFC-ready by the beginning of the next decade. This is quite an increase from the current 46% mark.
The insight firm also pointed out how historically, many of the terminals that were NFC-enabled were never actually activated.
“While the installed base of NFC-ready POS terminals has grown quickly, the contactless technology has in many cases not been activated.”
However, it highlights that this is now changing and an estimated 15 million POS terminals accepted contactless payments with Visa payWave, MasterCard PayPass or UnionPay Quickpass in mid-2016. A major factor for an increase in contactless activations are the rise of mPOS terminals.
The attach rate for NFC in the mPOS segment is anticipated to reach 45% in 2016 as NFC-ready mPOS terminal shipments reach 8.2 million units. The prognostication is that global shipments of NFC-ready mPOS terminals will reach 32.4 million units by 2020.
“The mPOS terminal market is growing faster than the traditional POS terminal segment and there are more than 80 vendors active on the global market today” said Johan Fagerberg, Senior Analyst at Berg Insight.
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