Annual shipments of NFC-ready POS terminals reached 67.2m units globally in 2020, bringing the total number to 140.5m or 68% of all POS terminals worldwide, according to Berg Insight.

This compares with shipments of 47.8m units globally and a total number of NFC-ready POS terminals worldwide of 100.4m in 2019, as reported by Berg in May 2020.

Nearly three-quarters of all POS terminals shipped worldwide during 2020 included support for NFC (74%) with the highest percentage being installed in Europe and North America — where more than nine in 10 terminals were NFC-ready (96%) — and with Brazil, Turkey and China remaining among the markets where NFC was also “very popular”.

Berg also predicts that the global installed base of NFC-ready POS terminals will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.3% to reach a total of 274.2m in 2025 or 91% of all POS terminals worldwide.

Despite rapid growth in the installed base of NFC-ready POS terminals, however, the analysts also note that “some of the terminals do still not have the contactless features turned on” and that consequently in 2020 only about 90m POS terminals worldwide accepted contactless payments with Visa payWave, Mastercard PayPass or UnionPay Quickpass.

 “The mPOS terminal market is growing at about the same rate as the traditional POS terminal segment,” Berg adds.

“The attach rate for NFC in the mPOS segment was 69% in 2020 as NFC-ready mPOS terminal shipments reached 26.9m units.

“Berg Insight forecasts that global shipments of NFC-ready mPOS terminals will grow at a CAGR of 11.7% in the next five years to reach 46.7m units by 2025.

“The growth is driven by the increase in mPOS terminal shipments from 39.2m units in 2020 to 50.3m units in 2025, as well as by a growth in the attach rate from 69% to 93%.”

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Learn more: Adoption, Contactless, Contactless mobile payment (CMP), Digital payments, Mastercard PayPass, mPOS, NFC, NFC Mobile Payments, Payments, Retail, UnionPay Quickpass, Visa PayWave

Territory: Brazil, Canada, China, Turkey, USA

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