The total value of PoS transactions across payment card terminals is expected to grow from $30tn this year to $41tn in 2031, a CAGR of 6.4%, according to Juniper Research.

This growth is driven by the accelerating convergence of in-store, online and mobile sales onto unified commerce platforms, as merchants retire standalone, static terminals in favour of systems that treat every transaction, physical or digital, as part of a single customer experience.

The strongest momentum is coming from verticals such as retail, hospitality and fast-food outlets, where channel fragmentation is high. In these environments, unified commerce options connect previously fragmented systems across multiple payment acceptance points, allowing the merchant to consolidate multiple channels into a single inventory, payment and customer record.

As channels converge, value is migrating away from the terminal and towards the connecting platform. Hardware margins continue to compress, while recurring revenue from software, analytics, loyalty and embedded finance becomes the principal return on each deployment.

“Unified commerce is no longer strictly a premium proposition; for some industries such as retail and QSR [quick service restaurants], it is a baseline expectation,” said research analyst Jawad Jahan. “Pure-play hardware vendors are expected to see their margins squeezed, and winners that emerge are those that treat the point of sale as a node in a larger system spanning store, web and mobile, and monetise the software and data moving across it.”

The market research suite offers a comprehensive assessment of the PoS market to date, providing analysis and forecasts of over 45,500 datapoints across 61 countries over six years. It includes a competitor leaderboard and examination of current and future market opportunities.

To download a sample of the report, visit www.juniperresearch.com/resources/free-research/from-transaction-to-transformation-the-future-of-pos, or to buy the report go to www.juniperresearch.com/research/fintech-payments/core-payments/pos-research-report.