Consumers are giving up cash in favour of credit cards and digital wallets when using self-service retail, according to a report from Pennsylvania-based retail tech company Cantaloupe.

Cantaloupe’s 2025 micropayment trends report reveals cashless payments now dominate self-service retail.

The report analysed millions of transactions from 2024 across vending, micro markets, amusement machines and smart stores. This annual report provides convenience services operators with insights on consumer behaviour, payment trends and emerging growth opportunities for the year ahead.

In 2024, 96% of micro market transactions and 100% of smart store transactions were cashless. Vending remains strong, with 77% of all vending cashless transactions made via card or mobile pay. For operators and retailers who invest in cashless payment technology, those machines result in significant revenue increases.

Consumers spent almost 27% more per transaction at micro markets and 101% more at smart stores than at traditional food and beverage vending machines. These formats often include higher-margin goods such as fresh food and household essentials, and are expanding into apartment buildings, gyms and more. Micro markets and smart stores are also allowing operators to grow and diversify their businesses with higher revenue opportunities in new locations and the ability to reach customers outside of traditional brick-and-mortar locations.

Tap-to-pay methods continue to rise, offering a secure and seamless checkout experience that consumers prefer, especially in self-service environments.

Despite higher prices for many consumer goods, self-service sales remained strong. Food and beverage vending sales exceeded $3.5bn in 2024 and micro market sales topped $1bn for the first time, indicating that, oftentimes, convenience outweighs cost for many consumers when it comes to in-the-moment purchases.

“This year’s data confirm what we’ve been seeing across our network: the shift toward cashless and smart retail continues to accelerate,” said Ravi Venkatesan, CEO of Cantaloupe. “In fact, our year-over-year data show that consumers who use cashless payment methods are less price-sensitive, despite increasing prices on consumer goods. Heavily cashless self-service options, like micro markets and smart stores, present opportunities for vending operators and retailers alike to continue driving revenue on higher margin necessities and convenience goods.”

In addition to looking at vending and convenience trends, this report also dives into recreational amusement, entertainment and gaming spending, giving an industry that hasn’t had this level of data visibility in the past a vision of performance. Here too, cashless is king, with card readers returning a significantly higher level of revenue than machines that only take cash.

The report is based on data from more than 625,000 Cantaloupe card readers on vending machines, 17,000 micro market kiosks, 24,000 amusement and gaming machines, and four months of smart store transactions.

The report also includes some industry predictions for the year ahead, including continued growth of total sales at food and beverage vending machines at 8% and micro markets at 40%. With the dominance of cashless payments across self-service formats, and the expected growth of smart store adoption in the convenience services and retail segments, forward-looking operators should see plenty of opportunity to increase revenue.

“Operators and retailers who embrace today’s cashless and smart retail technology are reaping the rewards with higher sales and the ability to service customers in places they weren’t able to before,” said Venkatesan. “We expect to see this trend continue as the world moves more towards frictionless self-service experiences.”

Cantaloupe (cantaloupe.com) offers micro-payment processing, self-checkout kiosks, mobile ordering, connected point of sale systems and enterprise cloud software. The firm’s products handle more than a billion transactions annually. It serves more than 30,000 customers in the USA, UK, EU, Australia, and Mexico.

Details of the report can be found at www.cantaloupe.com/resource-center/micropayment-trends-report-2025.