Saudi Arabia POS Terminal Market Size & Share Analysis - Growth Trends and Forecast (2026 - 2031)

Saudi Arabia POS Terminal Market Trends and Insights

Vision 2030 Cashless-Transaction Mandate

Saudi Arabia’s Financial Sector Development Program is steering all commerce toward digital settlement, pushing electronic payments to 79% of retail transactions in 2024 and lifting weekly POS values in Riyadh to SAR 13.1 billion in May 2025.^{[1]Saudi Gazette Staff, “E-payments account for 79% of retail transactions in Saudi Arabia in 2024,” Saudi Gazette, saudigazette.com.sa} The mandate compels merchants to upgrade hardware capable of loyalty integration, bilingual e-invoicing, and real-time reconciliation, creating a predictable multi-year replacement cycle.^{[2]Miguel Hadchity, “Saudi POS transactions surge 11% in late September to reach USD 3bn,” Arab News, arabnews.com} Structural-break research pinpoints December 2023 as an inflection, when open-banking standards and Samsung Pay preparation triggered a higher equilibrium for transaction volumes.^{[3]Yazeed Alsuhaibany, “From cash to contactless: Structural break evidence from Saudi Arabia's POS transaction patterns,” Decision Science Letters, growingscience.com} Vendors equipped with API-rich platforms are now favored because they shorten time-to-compliance for merchants tracking Vision 2030 KPIs. As a result, the cashless target acts less as a headline goal and more as a binding operational rulebook shaping product roadmaps across the Saudi Arabia POS terminal market.

Nationwide Roll-out of mada Contactless Network

Mada’s 96% NFC penetration eliminates the acceptance gap, turning contactless capability into a baseline expectation rather than a premium feature. February 2019 and December 2023 structural breaks, aligned with Apple Pay’s launch and subsequent Samsung Pay integration, correlate with steep jumps in the transaction mean, confirming network effects in action. Mastercard’s regional payment gateway, live since October 2024, adds another universal rail by processing 950 million transactions in 2023, thereby funneling additional traffic to NFC terminals. With ubiquity achieved, differentiation now hinges on biometric authentication, tokenization, and fraud analytics layered atop the contactless pipe. This pivot from hardware race to value extraction accelerates demand for cloud-managed, software-defined terminals across the Saudi Arabia POS terminal market.

Retail Modernization via Giga-Projects

The Public Investment Fund’s USD 1.3 trillion pipeline, NEOM, Red Sea, Qiddiya, adds 7.3 million m² of new retail space that must launch with integrated POS, e-invoicing, and omnichannel payment orchestration. NEOM’s automated port, Red Sea’s renewable-powered resorts, and Qiddiya’s mixed-reality attractions all require IoT-ready endpoints capable of high-density throughput and bilingual invoicing. PIF portfolio retailers such as Noon Minutes and Tamimi Markets are already piloting unified checkout and loyalty engines, proving the blueprint that other giga-project tenants are expected to follow.^{[4]Knight Frank Research, “Retail pipeline tied to PIF giga-projects,” Financial Times Partner Content, ft.com} These greenfield developments convert today’s modest hardware sales into decade-long service contracts around data analytics and fraud detection. Consequently, the Saudi Arabia POS terminal market gains a durable tailwind even as urban penetration nears saturation.

Mandatory e-Invoicing (Fatoora) Phase-II Compliance

ZATCA now mandates real-time API connectivity, structured XML/UBL invoices, and bilingual output for every receipt, transforming POS devices into active compliance nodes. Large corporates began migrating in 2023, but the SME wave commencing in 2025 yields the steepest upgrade curve, rewarding turnkey vendors like stc whose Soft PoS bundles start at SAR 125.35 (USD 33.4) per month and ship ZATCA-certified cashier software. Smartphone-based SoftPOS providers such as Xpence and Paymob also capitalize because they deliver compliance without dedicated hardware. Hospitals, under the Ministry of Health’s parallel digital-billing push, are migrating to e-invoicing modules that synchronize with insurance portals, escalating healthcare’s demand for advanced POS. The regulation therefore enforces a minimum functionality layer that legacy terminals cannot meet, locking in an extended replacement wave across the Saudi Arabia POS terminal market.

High MDR and Hardware Cost Sensitivity among SMEs

Small merchants still balk at merchant discount rates and device prices, which erode thin grocery or quick-service margins. Geidea joined forces with Tarabut Gateway in November 2024 to layer open-banking lending atop POS data, directly tackling a SAR 300 billion (USD 80 billion) SME credit gap. Sub-USD 35 monthly SoftPOS bundles from stc and phone-based acceptance from Xpence-Paymob lower entry cost, yet Berg Insight counts fewer than 10 million smartphones globally running SoftPOS as of 2023, showing adoption remains nascent. Opaque MDR structures, despite 2016 interchange caps, continue to cloud ROI calculations for rural retailers. Until pricing transparency widens and handset-based acceptance scales, SME onboarding will lag, tempering the headline growth of the Saudi Arabia POS terminal market.

Escalating Cyber-Fraud and PCI-DSS Compliance Burden

Global card fraud is projected at USD 36 billion in 2024 and Middle East consumers already favor digital wallets 60% of the time, raising the stakes for compliance. Trend Micro logged 110 million cybersecurity threats in the Kingdom during 2022, and average breach costs in the region exceed USD 7 million, making annual PCI audits, penetration tests, and tokenization mandatory yet expensive. ACI Worldwide’s July 2025 pact with iNet, which processes 5 million transactions daily from two PCI-grade data centers, underlines the capex needed to maintain certification at scale. Smaller acquirers unable to amortize these investments risk margin compression or market exit. Compliance therefore acts as both a protective moat for incumbents and a drag on overall CAGR within the Saudi Arabia POS terminal market.

Segment Analysis

By Mode of Payment Acceptance: Contactless Migration Accelerates Despite Contact-Based Dominance

Contact-based devices retained 57.86% of the Saudi Arabia POS terminal market share in 2025, but contactless terminals are charted for a 5.21% CAGR through 2031. The mada network’s 2.1 million NFC-ready terminals handled 12.6 billion electronic payments in 2024, a volume leap confirmed by structural-break analysis that recorded post-2023 segment means almost doubling earlier plateaus. Mastercard’s regional gateway and FIDO-based passkey service compound this trajectory by cutting fraud and checkout friction.

Despite faster growth, contactless expansion is not purely card-tap driven. The 60% regional preference for wallets signals a pivot to QR and token-based rails, favoring hybrid devices that process NFC, wallet push-payments, or dynamic QR alike. ZATCA compliance accelerates refresh cycles because cloud-managed contactless hardware can receive over-the-air invoice schema updates, whereas magnetic-stripe devices often require costly retrofits. Therefore, while contact-based units continue in segments demanding PIN authentication, merchant preference is tilting decisively toward multifunctional, contactless-first endpoints, reinforcing value migration inside the Saudi Arabia POS terminal market size.

By POS Type: Mobile and Portable Systems Outpace Fixed Installations in Service-Intensive Verticals

Fixed terminals held 62.79% share of the Saudi Arabia POS terminal market size in 2025 because grocery chains, pharmacies, and fuel stations rely on lane-based checkout and extensive peripherals. Yet mobile and portable devices are forecast to grow at a 4.54% CAGR through 2031 as hospitality, healthcare, and delivery operators adopt pay-at-table and curbside models. ENOC’s AI-driven POS rollout at 60 service stations and PetroApp’s USD 50 million funding round highlight how field mobility pairs with analytics to reshape fuel retail.

Android-based smart-POS now accounts for roughly 40% of global shipments, and units with built-in cellular represented 53% of 2023 deliveries, a pattern mirrored in Saudi adoption where 5G coverage already tops 55% in Riyadh. Mobile devices also ease Fatoora integration via cloud updates, reducing TCO for SMEs. However, remote provinces with patchy connectivity still favor fixed units capable of offline buffering. This urban-rural split ensures both form factors coexist, though incremental value accrues to portable terminals bundled with software subscriptions that lock in recurring revenue within the Saudi Arabia POS terminal market share.

By End-User Industry: Healthcare Leads Growth Vector While Retail Retains Scale

Retail contributed 41.92% of Saudi Arabia POS terminal market share in 2025, yet its expansion pace is tapering as penetration nears ceiling levels in hypermarkets and malls. In contrast, healthcare will post a 6.13% CAGR to 2031, spurred by NUPCO’s SAR 2.5 billion (USD 0.67 billion) supply-chain financing marketplace that mandates real-time digital billing and POS acceptance at pharmacies and clinics. Hospitals also confront PDPL requirements, prioritizing encrypted, tokenized POS that integrate with insurance gateways and e-invoicing APIs.

Hajj and Umrah pilgrim flows, totaling 86.16 million visitors in 2024, keep hospitality deployments robust in Makkah and Madinah. Transportation and logistics verticals mirror this momentum; PetroApp oversees payments for 500,000 vehicles, proving how fleet management intersects with embedded finance at the pump. Together these shifts illustrate how regulatory and sector-specific digitization tilt incremental opportunity away from saturated big-box retail toward healthcare and mobility services, forming the new demand frontier of the Saudi Arabia POS terminal market.

Note: Segment shares of all individual segments available upon report purchase

Geography Analysis

Riyadh captures 35% of weekly POS value, translating to SAR 4.6 billion (USD 1.2 billion) in May 2025, underpinned by government ministries and PIF-funded mega malls that will add 3 million square meter of retail floor space. Five-G consistency reaches 55.3% in the capital, enabling low-latency links to ZATCA for real-time invoice validation. Such bandwidth allows cloud-managed terminals to update firmware remotely, a critical feature as contactless acceptance becomes ubiquitous across the Saudi Arabia POS terminal market.

Jeddah follows with 14% share, benefitting from constant Umrah flow and serving as the logistics gateway to Makkah. Retail strips and waterfront developments amplify demand for high-throughput devices, while pilgrim peaks drive seasonal surges for mobile POS. Western Region giga-projects will add 4.3 million m² of new retail space, embedding payment orchestration from day one. Makkah and Madinah collectively endure bandwidth gaps, 5G consistency stands at 36.4%, thus merchants rely on hybrid devices that buffer transactions offline during pilgrimage hyper-peaks.

The Eastern Province houses industrial hubs where fleet POS and fuel payments proliferate. ENOC’s and PetroApp’s investments exemplify Khobar and Dammam’s role as test beds for AI-enabled terminals. In contrast, Northern Borders, Tabuk, and Al-Jouf face infrastructure deficits that limit deployment; Tabuk’s 23% year-on-year value jump to SAR 265.1 million (USD 70.7 million) in September 2024 shows latent appetite unleashed by incremental 4G upgrades. As nationwide 5G build-out continues past 2027, these secondary cities are expected to close the acceptance gap, injecting another layer of geographic diversification into the Saudi Arabia POS terminal market size.