For years, we treated the point of sale terminal (POS) as a simple cash register. Today, it is the nervous system of the business: the place where real demand, inventory availability, price elasticity, customer recurrence, and fraud risk mitigation converge. If the CFO measures margin, turnover, and working capital, then the intelligent POS is the instrument that orchestrates them in real time. It is not about accepting more payment methods, but about turning every transaction into a decision that improves EBITDA, accelerates cash flow, and strengthens the value proposition.
According to the Bank of Mexico, in its Annual Report on the “Infrastructure of the Financial Markets 2024,” Mexico has the infrastructure in place to make this leap. By December 2024, there were more than 6.3 million POS terminals installed in retail locations, of which more than 78% were operated and managed by nonbank financial institutions. This indicates a healthier balance between supply and acceptance in the market. It is not only about coverage, it is the material foundation for moving from “collecting payments” to managing the business from the checkout counter.
This local shift is occurring in a global context where noncash payments continue to grow steadily and are changing competitive logic. Both consumers and companies prioritize immediacy, interoperability among institutions, and frictionless payment experiences. The point of sale ceases to be an endpoint and becomes a platform for business decisions.
When we speak of an “intelligent POS,” we are not referring to new hardware or a more stylish checkout. We are talking about a decision-making platform built on three pillars: A unified data model that transforms each ticket into business signals (elasticity, baskets, recurrence, seasonality); an open architecture that exposes those signals via APIs to inventory, ERP, CRM, and anti-fraud systems; and a governance model that treats risk as a product: adaptive authentication and contextual scoring that increase approvals without triggering excessive chargebacks.
Applied to daily operations, this allows analyzing sales tickets to detect when demand rises or falls, identifying the preferences of frequent customers (for example, ordering coffee after lunch), and generating targeted promotions for times and days when such habits are observed. The goal is to increase the average ticket value during hours with growth potential.
With sales histories broken down by day and hour, management teams can accurately forecast weekend cash flow and decide whether to anticipate liquidity through sales advances or negotiate supplier terms without placing unnecessary pressure on working capital. At the same time, operations teams can adjust staff shifts to match recurring peaks, reducing idle time. In this context, embedded finance stops being a buzzword and becomes a natural outcome: advances calibrated with real cash data and better supplier terms supported by observable demand and rotation.
For senior management, the strategic discussion must shift from “how much do I pay to accept this type of payment” to “how much do I gain by accepting it.” In practice, this means managing a checkout economy: optimizing net approvals adjusted for fraud, designing authentication sequences that preserve conversion, and using POS information to set prices, define restocking dates, and personalize customer benefits. The metric ceases to be only the transaction cost; the relevant factors become margin per minute at the checkout, incremental ticket value driven by recommendations, and reduced reconciliation time between order and settlement. This change of perspective transforms a cost center into an EBITDA driver.
The expansion of nonbank acquirers and aggregators has extended acceptance to categories and regions once dominated by cash. Data confirms that the rebalancing among issuers, acquirers, and terminals is ongoing. Building on this foundation, the modernization of payment experiences in public services, such as the adoption of contactless bank cards and digital wallets in the Mexico City Metro, anticipates an adoption cycle that private companies can capitalize on to reduce friction and expand their customer base.
The opportunity no longer lies in choosing “the right terminal,” but in building an operating model around the checkout counter. This requires data portability by design, contracts that guarantee true interoperability, and a POS product owner with cross-functional responsibility across operations, finance, and IT. It also requires discipline: every adjustment in the checkout flow, whether a change in the screen interface, a fraud rule, or a promotion, must be treated as an experiment with a clear objective, hypothesis, and measurable impact on the P&L. In the medium term, companies that institutionalize this governance will capture greater market share, margin, and customer loyalty.
The POS is no longer just an operating cost. In Mexico, where acceptance infrastructure is already widespread and more evenly distributed, the real differentiation will come from those who treat the checkout as a commercial brain, not as an accessory. The strategy is not about accumulating gadgets but about leveraging data, keeping connections open, and turning transactions into direction. That is the path for payments to cease being a commodity and instead become a sustained competitive advantage. The infrastructure is ready; the next step is cultural: stop seeing the POS as an expense and start managing it as a strategic asset capable of driving margin, cash flow, and customer loyalty.
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