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Insights and Expertise

From the floor of Money20/20 Europe 2026

The checkout is now the front

line of payments compliance

merchants are not known for rushing decisions. When
they are moving this fast, it is worth asking why.

The answer is a collision of mandates arriving at the same
time. PCI DSS v4.0 is now in force, raising the bar on how
payment data is handled at the terminal (see https://www.
pcisecuritystandards.org). The EU Accessibility Act comes
into effect in June, requiring that payment interfaces be
usable by people with disabilities, a requirement that
eliminates a significant proportion of legacy hardware
(see https://tinyurl.com/3uzc5whr).

National e-invoicing mandates, advancing toward a Euro-
pean standard, mean that the terminal increasingly needs
to capture and transmit structured transaction data in
real time. And the Instant Payments Regulation, which
reached its first major reporting deadline in April, is mak-
By Jean-Philippe Niedergang ing real-time account-to-account settlement a standard ex-
Castles Technology pectation rather than a premium option.

alking the floor at Money20/20 Europe 2026 Each of these individually would represent a meaningful
in Amsterdam, one theme surfaced repeat- infrastructure project. Together, they represent a transfor-
edly in conversations with retailers, acquir- mation of what a payment terminal actually has to do.
W ers and payment infrastructure providers:
regulatory pressure is arriving faster than the infrastruc-
ture built to absorb it. Europe moves first — again

This isn't new, but what struck me in Amsterdam was how For payments professionals, the compliance overhaul
concretely that pressure has landed, not in the back office, unfolding across Europe may feel familiar. Europe was also
not in compliance teams, but right at the point of sale. The ahead of the United States in the rollout of EMV chip-card
checkout has quietly become the most regulated piece of standards, Strong Customer Authentication requirements
real estate in retail. under PSD2, and real-time payments mandates.

Legislative compliance is no longer a post-transaction This time, the shift involves the checkout itself. European
consideration. It begins the moment a customer reaches regulators are layering accessibility standards, instant
the terminal. Security, accessibility, tax reporting, instant payments requirements, e-invoicing mandates and stricter
settlement. These are concurrent requirements baked into data security rules directly into payment infrastructure.
the transaction itself. And a significant proportion of Eu-
ropean merchants are not yet equipped for what is already The United States is moving more gradually and through
in force, let alone what is coming. a less centralized regulatory framework. PCI DSS
A collision of mandates is requirements continue to tighten globally, while real-time
payments adoption, state privacy laws and accessibility
reshaping POS infrastructure expectations are increasing pressure on merchants and

The data Castles Technology published earlier this year in payment providers.
our Germany at the Checkout: POS Outlook 2026 report tells
part of that story (see https://tinyurl.com/2ad2avak). Eighty Many industry observers believe Europe is once again
percent of German retailers plan to overhaul their check- acting as an early indicator of where global payments
out hardware within two years, and half expect full POS infrastructure is heading, particularly as digital commerce,
software replacement. self-checkout and software-driven terminals become
standard worldwide.
Germany is the largest retail market in Europe, and its
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