Point of Sale set for a shake-up

Researchers are tipping the Point of Sale is set for a shake-up this year as retailers look to better cater to the mobile consumer and seek to replace legacy-based systems that are now reaching their end of life.

According to the latest IHL North American POS study these factors will result in one of the strongest years of POS growth in the last decade, with the market forecast to increase by six per cent.

Meanwhile, Juniper Research notes a spike in mobile Point of Sale adoption will see one in four transactions at the Point of Sale conducted using mobile devices by 2023.

So, what’s changing at the Point of Sale?

For the past 20 years research firm IHL has been delving into the trends of Point of Sale. This year they note two big issues are driving retailers to reconsider their Point of Sale technology:

• The end of Windows 7 support
• The need to adjust to unified commerce

Next year extended support for the Windows 7 operating system officially ends, meaning retailers running this software at the fixed Point of Sale will need to upgrade their technology.

In North America alone, IHL notes that will see over 1.7 million POS terminals up for replacement.

“This has many retailers considering other platforms from the traditional fixed position Windows-based POS,” IHL states.

Meanwhile, retailers are also looking to better cater to the needs of the consumer with detailed insight and unified commerce at the Point of Sale.

“As consumers continue to demand shopping options via multiple channels and particularly their mobile devices, we see this driving the need for new POS technologies to take advantage of these orders,” President of IHL Group, Greg Buzek explained.

“Once retailers get to a single view of their customer information and inventory across all their channels, the next step for most retailers is the updating of their POS technologies so that they can fully leverage the information to meet customer needs at the store level.”

The need for upgrades is likely to see the traditional POS market increase by six per cent this year in North America alone. It’s also likely to drive further adoption of mobile Point of Sale.

Last year IHL noted Mobile POS was continuing its rapid rollout, with the number of installed units increasing by 24.9% in 2017.

A further study by Juniper Research in 2018 also highlighted the growing role of the mobile Point of Sale. They found mobile Point of Sale (aka a device that connects wirelessly to the internet) accounted for an estimated 28 billion transactions globally.

By 2023 that figure is expected to increase three-fold, with 87 billion transactions to be completed at a mobile Point of Sale. In effect, that means one in four transactions at the Point of Sale will be conducted using mobile devices by 2023.

Juniper noted increased mPOS adoption was both responding to and resulting in increased use of digitised payments and would also prompt the price of mobile devices which are used as mobile Points of Sale to plummet, decreasing from an average $40 in 2018 to $33 in 2023.

In turn, that will spur on further adoption as small businesses currently reliant on cash turn to affordable digital technology.

Meanwhile, a series of reports have found consumers spend more on average when utilising the mobile Point of Sale.

IHL found retailers in North America who deployed mobile point-of-sale (POS) technology experienced a 24 per cent average increase in sales during 2017 compared with those who didn’t offer mobile checkout in-store.

The study further found about a third (34 per cent) of respondents had deployed mobile POS, while 31 per cent planned to do so over the next 12 months. An additional eight per cent planned to roll out the technology sometime in the next 12 to 24 months.

You can learn more about security and setup options for mobile Point of Sale systems here.