Payment Terminal Security Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Payment terminal security patents: mapping who holds the claims and where the field is still open
Concentrated but not locked up. the ranked leader holds 146 records and the top 5 combined account for 28.6% of all 2,103 records in scope — real weight, but not a closed field. Filings ran from 132 in 2017 to a peak of 143 in 2018, then declined to 33 by 2024 — a 68% drop across that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent bars understate actual filing activity rather than confirming a continued decline.
- 1LICENTIA GROUP6.9%
- 2MYPINPAD6.8%
- 3BLUEFIN PAYMENT SYSTEMS LLC5.1%
- 4MASTERCARD INT INC5.0%
- 5WORLDPAY LTD4.8%
See the full payment terminal security analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions on payment terminal security patents
Who holds the most patents in payment terminal security?
The leading assignee in this dataset holds 146 records, with the next four ranked assignees combining with it to reach 602 records, or 28.6% of all 2,103 records in scope. That leadership includes both specialist PIN-entry security firms and larger payment network and terminal-maker assignees. The ranking covers 100 companies in total, so the leader’s share, while notable, still leaves the majority of filings spread across a long tail of smaller filers.
Is patent filing in payment terminal security growing or shrinking?
Complete-year data shows a clear decline: filings dropped from 102 in 2021 to 33 in 2024, a 68% fall across that span, after peaking at 143 in 2018. However, because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete and should not be read as continuing that trend. A fair read is that filing has cooled from its 2018 peak, with the most recent years too thin on data to characterise yet.
What technology areas dominate payment terminal security patents?
IPC subclass G06Q, covering business, commerce and administrative data processing, appears in 56.7% of the 2,103 records, making transaction-logic and workflow claims the largest single cluster. G06F (electric digital data processing) follows at 39.6% and H04L (digital information transmission) at 23.3%, with G07F (coin-freed and vending apparatus) close behind at 22.5%. Because filings often carry multiple IPC classes, these shares overlap rather than partition the field, showing how much filing activity spans both software workflow and hardware security mechanisms together.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Payment Terminal Security covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.