In 2025, Android-based point-of-sale (POS) terminals made up almost half of the globe’s POS shipments (48%) at a time when the total number of these shipments grew by only 1%.
The operating system is displacing legacy proprietary or embedded operating systems on payment terminals and is expected to rise to around 70% of shipment totals by 2032.
Already, this change is taking shape in South Africa, with Nedbank, Standard Bank and Absa marketing solutions built on the platform.
The technology’s success story is a convergence of economic, technical and ecosystem-level advantages over the proprietary systems it is displacing.
For close to two decades, the payment terminal estate in South African retail has run on Linux and Unix-based systems because their models were free, open source, and carried a small footprint and no licence cost.
These became the operational payment layer retailers built their store operations on, but now these are under strain because they are expensive to maintain and challenging to secure.
Another reason why Android is becoming a dominant platform is that it is simply easier to implement and maintain.
Due to rapid advancements in technology, security certificates and encryption are expiring or not meeting modern standards. As cryptography ages, security standards move and certificates lapse; retailers are pushed to change their systems to ensure they are not open to vulnerabilities and risk.
Android helps them to bypass these risks. From a security standpoint, the benefits of the technology are perhaps the most significant. Every payment device carries a level one certification for its hardware and a level two certification for the combination of hardware and software, with a level three certification applied per bank.
These expire over time, and traditional terminals have to be completely replaced when the certification lapses. On Android, the integration is abstracted from the device, so when the hardware reaches end of life, the retailer’s applications carry across largely unchanged.
The transition is closer to moving to a newer device on the same operating system than it is to migrating between entirely different platforms. The end result is that the retailer isn’t left rebuilding an integration every time a certificate expires.
Another reason why Android is becoming a dominant platform is that it is simply easier to implement and maintain. On a traditional Linux terminal, for example, any custom workflow – a loyalty sign-up, a split payment option or a new checkout step – has to be built and deployed by the terminal vendor.
As a result, a retailer’s roadmap is dictated by someone else’s development cycle. Android removes that dependency as retailers can now configure these workflows directly on the device without needing a specialised software development team. And they are no longer required to route every new feature through a single vendor.
Android-based devices also allow a retailer to run multiple functions on one unit, while still meeting the security and compliance requirements the payments industry demands.
Built-in printers reduce the need for a separate physical printer at the till, and digital invoices and signatures remove another piece of hardware from the counter altogether, lowering both cost and complexity in the process.
Staff training also benefits from the move. A consistent operating system across a device fleet means store teams don’t need to re-learn how to operate new hardware every time a unit is replaced.
This consistency has a measurable impact on how confidently staff can handle a transaction and manage customer experiences.
The technology levels the proverbial playing field, allowing retailers to run multiple functions on a single device, while still meeting security and compliance requirements.
In South Africa, retailers have already taken advantage of the technology, with a leading tier one retailer moving from its traditional, Windows-based POS to multi-solution support with the goal of protecting its investment.
The stores started with a combination of legacy and new, fully integrated Android tablets and are now moving towards a complete Android solution across the country.
The Android tablets combine printing, scanning and mobile connectivity into a single device and replace a counter that would have carried a separate printer, keyboard, mouse, screen, network switch and computer – each one with its own cost to the company and point of failure.
The incremental move to Android has allowed the company's employees to move around the floor, initiate sales where customers are standing, and reduce both queues and customer delays.
Android is giving retailers the ability to change who controls the pace of sales and customer interactions within their stores. That control extends beyond the shop floor because the technology separates the payment application from the hardware it runs on, so as technology speeds up, certification cycles shorten, and payment methods multiply, retailers can keep up.
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