Imran Vilcassim, Chief Commercial Officer, Digital Platforms at BPC, explores how Romania’s booming digital payments outpace merchant readiness and why mobile POS is emerging as the practical solution.
Romania’s digital payments volumes are rising fast, but merchant infrastructure isn’t keeping up. Independent market models estimate total digital payments will reach nearly $93.5 billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual rate of just over 20%. On the ground, cards, mobile wallets and QR codes are increasingly common across retail, hospitality and services.
That change shows up in observed data as well: the European Central Bank records steady growth in the number and value of card payments, while Eurostat shows far more Romanians shopping online than a decade ago.
The pandemic accelerated contactless habits, mobile penetration reached saturation and e-commerce expanded beyond urban centres. Between 2020 and 2023, the share of Romanians who reported using cash dropped from 45% to just 21%. Bank account penetration rose to 76% in 2024, with 22.4 million active cards in circulation. Meanwhile, digital wallet and mobile payments are now projected to reach over $23 billion in transaction value by 2025.
But while consumer behaviour has changed quickly, merchant enablement still lags demand. Romania has roughly 260,000 card-accepting terminals, serving about 521,000 small and medium-sized enterprises that make up 99.7% of active companies and contribute around 66% of non-financial private-sector employment and 56% of gross value added. Demand is strong across the board, but many smaller merchants are still left out.
In June 2024, Law No. 406/2023 came into force in Romania, requiring registered businesses to offer at least one non-cash payment method. The rule is technology-agnostic, so either a countertop card terminal or secure phone-based acceptance qualifies. The practical question is no longer whether to accept electronically, but how to do so reliably and at low cost.
The rise of mobile terminals
This is where mobile POS comes in and in two forms. First, SoftPOS (often called tap-to-phone): a secure app on an NFC-enabled Android handset that takes a contactless tap and issues a digital receipt. Second, mPOS: compact Android handhelds that travel with staff and handle payments (and, where needed, peripherals).
For many merchants, mobile POS is the only viable way to accept payments without overhauling the business. A trader can install a certified app on an NFC-enabled Android phone and start taking payments within hours: no technician visit, no upfront terminal cost. The same approach scales to teams with dedicated handhelds in busier settings, extending coverage to the places where sales actually happen.
Mobile POS is more than just a different form factor. On a single device, merchants can issue digital receipts, run simple loyalty, record itemised sales and produce a clean end-of-day export. Those everyday data points reduce disputes, improve stock decisions and make credit conversations easier for very small firms. For Romania’s microenterprises, the benefit is practical rather than flashy.
The change is visible across sectors. In tourism, guesthouses and guides serve international visitors without investing in countertop hardware. In agriculture, small producers accept payments directly at markets. Mobile service providers and tradespeople transact on the move, using phone-based acceptance to match how they work. Payment meets the sale, rather than the other way round.
These services are already available through Romanian banks, which helps with trust, onboarding and reconciliation. By late 2024, around 25,000 acceptance points were taking card payments via SoftPOS in Romania, according to Visa figures shared at the Banking 4.0 conference.
For example, Banca Transilvania read the shift early and built for it. As tap, QR, and phones spread, the bank expanded merchant acquiring on BPC’s SmartVista so modern ways to pay could run on one stack. In 2019, it switched on Apple Pay, Garmin Pay, and Fitbit Pay, making secure tap-and-go and card-on-file routine. Distribution followed: within a few years the POS network became Romania’s second largest, now serving over 110000 merchants with market share above 40%, and as was recorded by bank, over 80% of POS payments became contactless.
Merchants felt it in daily operations. Faster onboarding, fewer failed taps, tidy end-of-day files, and add-ons like dynamic currency conversion, surcharging where allowed, loyalty, and merchant-initiated transactions. The bank used the same backing technology to run StarBT for both shoppers and stores. It also delivered useful firsts, including Western Union transfers at ATMs and later online. Cardholders gained self-service controls and instant SMS alerts, and lately, the bank leapt forward with delivering first EU Digital Identity wallet payment in Romania. The pattern is simple: pick a future-proven platform that offers all modern payment types, deploy it to channels where sales happen, and deliver a modern digital reliable payment experience to your end users.
A role for banks
Some businesses still hold back for ordinary reasons: they think digital acceptance means expensive hardware, long contracts or a technician on site. In many places, people simply haven’t seen phone-based options in action. The fix is practical rather than grand: let a merchant sign up on the same device that will take payments, activate them in hours rather than days, keep updates quiet in the background, and make sure help is there during trading. When the everyday experience is smooth, adoption follows; the Banca Transilvania case just proves it.
Banks have a clear opening here. Acquiring paired with mobile POS lowers deployment cost, widens reach and turns the ‘terminal’ into a touchpoint for simple analytics, tidy tax exports and basic customer engagement – more of a business tool than a box. It’s also a better fit for Romania’s long tail of very small firms: one handset at a time reaches segments a countertop roll-out never will, and the data it produces makes it easier to support those customers over time.
Romania’s payments story is about making acceptance work wherever business happens. The rule sets the baseline, demand is already there, and mobile POS, from handhelds to SoftPOS, gives merchants a practical way to meet it. What matters now is execution: get traders live on the devices they already use, keep the tap reliable when it’s busy, and end each day with records they can trust. Do that, and compliance becomes habit… and habit turns into growth.
*This is expert content provided by BPC.
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