India and China key as mPOS market booms

mPOS transaction values will exceed $1.9 trillion by 2024, up from $850 billion in 2019, according to Juniper Research. This will driven by service adoption from new business users, including pop-up stores and street vendors, for whom the acceptance of card payments was previously inaccessible.

India and China are flagged up as countries primed for the expansion of PoS adoption, assisted by high smartphone penetration rates and the growing acceptance of cashless payments. The shift from legacy on-premise PoS systems to cloud-based solutions will provide new opportunities for PoS software vendors to attract smaller business users such as those in the retailer and restaurant space.

Cash transactions in China and India will decrease over the next five years, driven by the former’s dominant share of global cards in issue and government incentives to reduce cash transactions in the latter. Juniper Research also forecasts that popular digital payment services, such as Alipay and WeChat Pay, will be compatible with an increasing number of PoS terminals and will play significant roles in the growth of mPOS and contactless transactions in India and China.

There will also be strong growth of mPOS adoption and contactless usage in the US, which will contribute to the global growth of PoS transactions following the completion of EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) roll-outs.