When working in ecommerce, you’d be a fool not to take advantage of the latest point-of-sale technology – it just has so many benefits.
You can use it to keep track of your inventory, track customer use to offer points or bonuses and boost customer loyalty, and even operate offline. It’s way more than just payment processing.
So, let’s do a deep dive into the world of point-of-sale (POS) systems, and look at some of the key POS statistics you should know about.
Stats For The POS Market As A Whole
- According to Market Watch, the global POS software market was valued at a whopping 9000.23 million USD in 2021.
As a general rule, POS is being used more and more over time. But this can be affected by external factors. A typical example would be the coronavirus pandemic, which often saw the closure (temporary or permanent) of both physical stores and the hospitality sector, including restaurants, cafés, and hotels. - So it may not come as much of a surprise that the global POS software market did not grow as much as was predicted in 2021, where according to Grand View Research, the reach was expected to go up to as much as 10.39 billion.
- The compound annual growth rate, or CAGR, comes in at 9.5% according to Grand View Research. And according to Wikifinancepedia, a good CAGR percentage of an industry for an investor would be between 8 and 12%.
- What’s more, according to a research study by Global Market Insights Inc, the market size for POS is projected to be valued at a whopping 60 billion USD by 2030.
- Grand View Research also found that it’s the North America regional market that accounted for the largest share of regional POS market share in 2020, accounting for over 31%.
- According to Sales Force, more than half of all shoppers have purchased a product online with the intent to pick it up at a physical store.
The figure is surprisingly high at a whopping 57%, which suggests that there is still demand for physical stores even when shoppers do their purchasing online. - And it turns out that even when they’re in a physical store, shoppers will use online facilities to learn more about a product. Again, according to Sales Force, 29% of shoppers have used a mobile device to learn about products when in a store, and a significant proportion do this from having scanned a QR code displayed for the product.
- According to a survey carried out by Retail Consulting Partners on POS Customer Engagement, a staggering 85% of retailers considered enhancing digital commerce as their number one business priority for 2021, which comes as no surprise of course.
- But interestingly, the report also states that Order Management System (OMS) integration is a priority for 67% of retailers.
And Grogman of RCP goes so far as to say that omnichannel capabilities of retailers is a key differentiating factor when it comes to driving customer loyalty. - There is also a growing trend in the number of retailers prioritizing POS software upgrade or placement, according to Retail Consulting Partners on POS Customer Engagement, with the figure coming in at 52%, which is up from 41% the previous year.
This is significant because POS systems typically only need replacing once every 5 years or sometimes longer, so this figure is suggestive of retailers seeking to gain a competitive edge through the use of newer POS systems. - According to the FIS Global Payments Report, digital wallets accounted for almost half of all global e-commerce transaction value in the year 2021, with the precise figure coming in at 48.6%.
- They then go on to say that they expect this figure to go up, slowly but surely, over the course of the next few years, going so far as to predict that by 2025, this figure will not just reach, but in fact surpass 8.3 trillion USD.
- Interestingly, the same report then goes on to add that this trend will also seep into use at in-store physical points of sale, rising to almost 39% by 2025, which is an increase of 10% from the 2021 levels.
- According to the FIS Global Payments Report, the world’s fastest growing payment method, both online and offline in the year 2025 will be BNPL, which stands for “buy now, pay later”.
And as for more current figures, the report then went on to say that BNPL accounted for 8.1% of regional e-commerce transaction value in Europe in 2021, which works out at more than double the value for the same time period in the US, which comes in at 3.8%. - Another factor affecting the POS system use is the ever-growing trend in a reduction of payments by cash.
- According to the predictions from the FIS Global Payments Report, it is believed that cash will drop from the already relatively low figure of 17.9% in 2021 (a total transaction value of 8.3 trillion USD) down to less than 10% to a mere 9.8% by 2025 (a total transaction value of 5.8 trillion USD).
Stats For Mobile POS Transactions
- As you may imagine, online transactions are no longer only carried out on desktops and PCs. As more and more online retailers ensure that their websites are responsive, so as to be read easily on mobile devices, the market for mobile POS payments is reaching very high levels…
According to Statista, the Mobile POS total transaction value was projected to reach a whopping 2.88 trillion USD worldwide in 2022. - Statista also states that they expect mobile POS transactions to produce a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.83%.
Statista then proceeded to take this CAGR figure to predict the projected total amount of mobile POS transaction value to reach a whopping 5.75 trillion USD by 2027. - Statista also reports that the average transaction value per user on mobile POS systems is on the rise, and is expected to reach as high as 1,92000 USD in 2022.
Again, this should come as little surprise. With people using mobile devices with more frequency and greater comfort, it is going to become an even more widely used payment method for consumers in the future. - As you may imagine, some countries have taken more quickly to paying through mobile POS systems than others. And, as Statista states in their report, the highest recorded country-wide mobile POS transaction value was reached in China, with a value of 1,554 billion USD in 2022.
Stats For Cloud-Based POS Systems
- Cloud-based POS systems have clear advantages over more traditional systems that rely on a particular fixed location or connection to a local network. With cloud-based POS systems, customers can make their transactions wherever they happen to be. According to Global Market Insights, the global cloud-based POS market value surpassed 3 billion USD in the year 2021. And what’s more, with a compound aggregate growth rate coming in at over a staggering 20%, the worldwide cloud-based POS market value is expected to reach a whopping 9 billion USD by 2026, and 10 billion USD by 2028.
POS User Personalization Stats
- Personalization is one of the primary benefits of modern day POS systems, with consultation surveys demonstrating that customers generally purchase more products and services than they had originally intended when their shopping experience is tailored specifically to them and their customer journey.
According to a survey carried out by Retail Consulting Partners on POS Customer Engagement, a whopping 41% of retailers reported that customer identification and the personalization of the shopping experience was a top priority for customer engagement in 2021. - As for how many retailers are already using this service, according to the R.C.P. (2020). 2020 POS / Customer Engagement Survey Report, 34% use apps to retrieve customer information with personalized customer experiences in mind.
- The same report also goes on to say that 56% of retailers retrieve this information during checkout, while 22% do so before checkout, and 7% of retailers request a consumer’s contact details after checkout.
- The R.C.P. (2020). 2020 POS / Customer Engagement Survey Report also lays out that 35% of retailers are already offering customers personalized rewards based on customer loyalty.
This same survey also reported that 23% of retailers intend to offer such personalized customer rewards within the following year, and an additional 23% intending to do so within the next 3 years. - What’s more, according to Accenture, a staggering 91% of shoppers are more likely to spend in stores that provide more personalized, and therefore more relevant purchasing suggestions.
And what makes the argument for such POS personalization even more compelling is that, as Accenture reports, 83% of consumers are willing to provide personal information to retailers in exchange for a more personalized shopping experience.
And to back this argument up further still, according to the R.C.P. (2020). 2020 POS / Customer Engagement Survey Report, a personalized shopping service is a key consideration for consumers when searching for stores to shop in. - And last, but certainly not least, the R.C.P. (2020). 2020 POS / Customer Engagement Survey Report makes an interesting assertion, saying that more than half of consumers (56%) choose to buy from brands that allow them to use a shared cart across different channels.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why Is A POS System Important?
POS systems have multiple benefits.
They can help to not only streamline the sales process and track sales and inventory depletion, but they can also be easily integrated with a range of other software used by the business.
What Type Of Data Is Point Of Sale?
POS data is basically any data collected through a store’s payment system, whether online or offline.
It typically includes the merchandise purchased and the time of the sale, but may also include geographic location, data on repeat sales, what items are typically purchased together, and even demographic information.
Why Is POS Data Important?
POS data provides valuable information on customer behavior and buying trends.
This can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of new marketing and merchandising techniques.
What Is POS Forecasting?
It’s always good to be able to predict demand for your products or services, and that’s where POS forecasting comes in.
Even if your offering is several steps away from the end-user, you can use regression analysis of POS data to predict demand.
Wrap Up
There’s a lot you can learn from POS tracking, and you really ought to take advantage of the opportunity to use POS to monitor the nature of your sales, and inform business decisions.
In almost every way, the trend for POS technology is growing, both worldwide and at home.
Consumers love to take advantage of the more convenient and personalized customer journey that’s made available to them through the latest POD technology.
Personalized customer journeys are basically revolutionizing the industry and are shaping how the industry will work moving forward.
And to demonstrate retailers’ willingness to get on board with the latest POS technology, there are the stats for how frequently retailers are updating their POS technology, at a much quicker rate than is absolutely necessary.
While America still has the bulk market share in the POS system market, this makes up just one third of the global total.
Consumers around the world have responded incredibly well to the POS services offered to them as consumers.
Consumers have been gradually moving away from using cash for quite some time now, and this trend is set to continue.
And at the same time, there’s also a significant increase in the use of combining both in-store and online shopping processes, with so many customers buying online and collecting in store, or researching a product online (e.g. using a QR code) while they are actually in a physical store.
A similar thing can be said for the increase in use of digital wallets, with their use already closing in on the 50% mark in 2021.
Paul Martinez is the founder of EcomSidekick.com. He is an expert in the areas of finance, real estate, eCommerce, traffic and conversion.
Join him on EcomSidekick.com to learn how to improve your financial life and excel in these areas. Before starting this media site, Paul built from scratch and managed two multi-million dollar companies. One in the real estate sector and one in the eCommerce sector.