Retail giants are accelerating the adoption of smart PoS following recent global system outages, according to a study from Juniper Research.

It forecasts that the value of global PoS terminal transactions will reach $17tn by the end of 2024, and grow by 25% to 2028.

This growth comes despite the recent PoS outages in some retail store chains across the globe, forcing a number of temporary store closures. Significant financial and security risks were exposed during these faults, continuing the demand for smart PoS terminals to replace outdated legacy systems.

The study found many retailers were insufficiently prepared to address issues with their legacy PoS systems, such as terminal outages in physical retail stores. However, it identified smart PoS technologies as a key platform to mitigate issues such as outages. This includes IoT‑powered systems to ensure consistency and strong connectivity with other retail systems, and cloud storage for customer data to prevent hacking and malware. Avoiding systems failures from legacy systems must be a key consideration for retailers when upgrading PoS technology, targeting maximum processing efficiency and customer satisfaction.

PoS terminal providers are expanding their offerings to provide capabilities beyond payments. Smart PoS offers enhanced functions over traditional PoS, such as staff management, loyalty cards processing, inventory management and shop synchronisation with other outlets in the same chain.

Research author Daniel Bedford said: “Despite the higher cost of implementation in comparison with traditional PoS, embracing smart PoS will secure a return on investment for retailers, preventing system failures alongside enhanced business integrations.”

The market research (www.juniperresearch.com/research/fintech-payments/core-payments/pos-terminals-research-report) assesses the PoS terminals market to date, providing analysis and forecasts of over 46,000 datapoints, covering 60 markets over the next five years.