POS terminals in the UK 2012-2021

In 2021, the amount of POS terminals in the United Kingdom amounted to almost three million. Point of Sale (POS) terminals are an electronic device that records and processes a card payment. With the rise of cashless payments across Europe, the number of POS terminals has also seen a rise. During 2018, the number of card payments made at point of sale units in Europe amounted to approximately 62.5 billion transactions.

Cashless payments

The United Kingdom (UK) has seen an annual rise in the number of cashless payments, with almost 30 billion such transactions made during 2017. Young adults in the UK has shown far more acceptance towards the idea of a cashless society.

Fall of ATMs

With the rise of cashless payments, the need for physical cash has become less relevant. A knock-on effect of this is a fall in the number of Automated Teller Machines (ATM) in operation across Europe. Between 2014 and 2018, the number of ATM’s in Europe fell by almost 30 thousand.