The US mPOS market has been in the center of attention of several global mobile POS providers since EMV liability shift in October 2015. This also refers to those providers that once considered the US to be a Red Ocean.
The US and European mPOS Markets
Before October 2015, the US mobile point-of-sale market wasn’t of great interest to most European mPOS providers. Later, with the beginning of the EMV liability shift in the US, companies like SumUp, the UK-based leading mPOS company in Europe, became interested in the US mPOS sector.
It is important to note that the US mPOS market was previously dominated by Square Inc., a financial services, merchant services aggregator and mobile payment company based in San Francisco, California. Today, SumUp and other similar companies are trying to gain some control over the market as well.
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The Difference Between the US and European mPOS Markets
If you compare the US and European mPOS markets, you’ll see the latter has EMV transactions packaged together with PIN security. The former has adopted dip and sign to yield increased customer convenience.
SumUp CEO Dan Klein notes that in Europe they always use a PIN pad, which cannot be said about the US market. So they had to significantly simplify their products for the US market. In the US, PIN and signature weren’t required for more than 60% of Visa’s chip-based credit and debit cards until 2015.
By 2025, the US market is expected to see a larger amount of chip and PIN-backed transactions since Walmart and other merchants target PIN-based transactions for improved security.
Modern World of mPOS
According to Juniper Research, mobile POS terminals and technology are expected to make up 40% of retail sales by 2021. mPOS providers are now focused on capturing as much as possible of that market and are offering new products and services to their customers.
Thales, a cybersecurity company, announced it would introduce the payShield 9000 hardware security module in the United Arab Emirates. The goal is to help tech provider Swiftch launch a MasterCard and Visa-certified mPOS solution in the Middle East.
WePay, a leading payment services provider, rolled out a new mPOS solution aimed at enabling retailers to integrate online and in-person payments.
Square is going to offer new pricing for their well-known EMV card reader that counted for half a million sales in its 1st year on the market. This is great especially for merchants who cannot afford the reader’s $60 price tag. Soon it will be available for 60 $1-a-week payments.