According to new research from Juniper Research, the market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.4%, driven by businesses replacing traditional standalone payment terminals with integrated platforms that connect in-store, online and mobile commerce into a single ecosystem.
The research highlights that merchants are moving beyond simply accepting payments to creating seamless shopping experiences across every customer touchpoint. Rather than managing separate systems for physical stores, e-commerce and mobile channels, unified commerce enables businesses to consolidate inventory, customer data and payments onto a single platform.
The trend is particularly evident in retail, hospitality and quick-service restaurants (QSRs), where consumers increasingly expect to move effortlessly between online and in-store shopping.
By connecting multiple payment acceptance points into one platform, retailers can gain a single view of customers, inventory and transactions, while streamlining operations and improving service delivery.
While payment terminals remain essential, Juniper Research notes that future growth is shifting away from hardware towards software and value-added digital services.
As margins on payment terminals continue to tighten, vendors are increasingly generating recurring revenue through cloud-based software, customer analytics, loyalty programmes and embedded finance solutions.
These services enable merchants to better understand customer behaviour, personalise shopping experiences and unlock new revenue opportunities beyond payment processing.
Research analyst Jawad Jahan says unified commerce has rapidly evolved from a competitive advantage into a business necessity.
"Unified commerce is no longer strictly a premium proposition; for some industries such as retail and QSR, it is a baseline expectation. Pure-play hardware vendors are expected to see their margins squeezed, and winners that emerge are those that treat the point of sale as a node in a larger system spanning store, web and mobile, and monetise the software and data moving across it."
For retailers, the shift reflects broader changes in consumer behaviour, with shoppers expecting consistent experiences whether browsing online, shopping via mobile apps or visiting physical stores.
Integrated commerce platforms also simplify business operations by reducing fragmented systems, improving stock visibility and enabling faster deployment of new customer services such as click-and-collect, personalised promotions and omnichannel loyalty programmes.
The findings suggest that retailers investing in unified commerce infrastructure will be better positioned to respond to changing consumer expectations while improving operational efficiency and long-term profitability.
Juniper Research's latest POS Market 2026–2031 study provides forecasts across 61 countries and analyses more than 45,500 market datapoints, alongside a competitor leaderboard and assessment of future opportunities.
As the distinction between digital and physical retail continues to blur, the report concludes that the future value of the POS market will increasingly be determined not by payment hardware itself, but by the software platforms and data services that connect every transaction across the retail ecosystem.
