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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/payment-terminal-security-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Secure Chips & PaymentsPayment 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.
- Filing has cooled from its peak. 2018 was the high point at 143 records a year, and complete-year filings fell 68% from 2021 (102) to 2024 (33).
- Business-process claims dominate the IPC mix. G06Q covers 56.7% of the 2,103 records, more than G06F and H04L combined by share, showing how much of this field is transaction logic rather than pure hardware.
2,103
Published Records
29%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-68%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (102 records) with 2024 (33) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 2,103 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What this landscape covers
Payment terminal security sits at the intersection of embedded hardware and transaction software: tamper detection mesh, key injection, secure display and firmware attestation claims all show up alongside PIN entry device and epoxy potting mechanics. The dataset in scope spans 2,103 published records filed or published between 2015 and mid-2026, drawn from filings that combine point-of-sale hardware language with tamper- and key-management-specific terms.
Because a single filing can carry several IPC classes, the technology composition below sums to more than the record total — that is expected and shows where filings overlap disciplines rather than where they are double-counted.
Filing activity and technology composition, 2015-2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. 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.Run this in Eureka MCP
The data
Filing trend and technology composition
Annual filing counts and IPC subclass shares across all 2,103 records in scope, drawn directly from the underlying patent data.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
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.
IPC subclass composition
G06Q (business, commerce and admin data processing) touches 56.7% of the 2,103 records, ahead of G06F (39.6%), H04L (23.3%) and G07F, coin-freed and vending apparatus, at 22.5%. The presence of G07G (cash registers, 4.7%) and G08B (alarm systems, 2.8%) as smaller but distinct clusters points to checkout- and alarm-adjacent filings that sit outside the core hardware-security claims.
Shares are the percentage of the 2,103 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. 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.
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Representative and most-cited records
Representative filing
US12067563B2 — System for collecting customer ratings from a pin entry device
TRURATING LIMITED
The patent describes a system that collects customer ratings during a transaction through an electronic point-of-sale system, coordinating a POS module, a PIN entry device, a payment application plug-in, a scanner pass-through driver and a POS proxy module so ratings data can be gathered without disrupting the payment application's control of the PIN entry device.Filed by TruRating Limited, published 2024-08-20.
Most-cited records in this dataset
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6065679A | Modular transaction terminal | 1,507 |
| 2 | US20140019352A1 | Multi-purpose virtual card transaction apparatuses, methods and systems | 1,168 |
| 3 | US20140289833A1 | Advanced authentication techniques and applications | 1,081 |
| 4 | US5742845A | System for extending present open network communication protocols to communicate with non-standard I/O device… | 847 |
| 5 | US20120209749A1 | Snap mobile payment apparatuses, methods and systems | 841 |
| 6 | US20120253852A1 | Restricted-use account payment administration apparatuses, methods and systems | 730 |
| 7 | US5336870A | System for remote purchase payment transactions and remote bill payments | 636 |
| 8 | US20160275461A1 | Automated attestation of device integrity using the block chain | 581 |
| 9 | US20180191501A1 | System and method for sharing keys across authenticators | 506 |
| 10 | US20130024371A1 | Electronic offer optimization and redemption apparatuses, methods and systems | 488 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations inside a searched corpus — read them as a signal of influence on later filings, not as a measure of which patents matter most today.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. 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.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three figures from this dataset matter most for anyone deciding where to file next in payment terminal security.
Concentration
28.6%
of 2,103 records held by top 5
The top of the field is real but not closed
The leading assignee holds 146 records and the top 5 combined hold 602, or 28.6% of all 2,103 records in scope. That leaves more than 70% of the field spread across a long tail, including the remainder of the ranked leaders down to 100 and 57 records at fifth and tenth place respectively.
Ranking covers 100 companies, not a top-50 cut.
Filing momentum
-68%
2021 to 2024, complete years
Complete-year filings have fallen sharply from their 2018 peak
Annual filings peaked at 143 in 2018 and dropped from 102 in 2021 to 33 in 2024, a 68% decline across the three-year span. 2025 and 2026 counts are still filling in given the roughly 18-month publication lag, so they should not be read as continuing that decline.
Peak year: 2018 at 143 records.
Claim geography
56.7%
of records touch G06Q
Business-process claims outweigh pure hardware
G06Q, business and commerce data processing, touches 56.7% of the 2,103 records, well ahead of G06F at 39.6% and H04L at 23.3%. That skew suggests transaction-logic and workflow claims are as contested as the physical tamper-detection and secure-display hardware itself.
A record can carry multiple IPC classes.
Filing venues
846
US receiving-office records
The US anchors filing activity, PCT and EPO follow
United States filings lead at 846 records, with Europe (EPO) at 295 and WIPO/PCT filings at 222 behind it. Australia, the UK and Canada each carry meaningfully smaller but non-trivial shares, indicating protection strategies that extend beyond a single jurisdiction for the more active filers.
Receiving offices, not counted per family.
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to payment terminal security, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. 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.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who is filing, and where momentum has shifted
Filing concentration sits with a small group of specialist PIN-entry and payment-security firms alongside major card networks and terminal makers; recent-year activity across the tracked assignees has slowed markedly relative to the peak filing years.
Leader
146
records
A specialist PIN-entry security firm sets the pace
The top-ranked assignee in this dataset holds 146 records, well ahead of the field, with the second-ranked firm close behind as part of a co-filing relationship that produced the strongest co-assignee pairing in the dataset at 128 shared records.
Leader: 146 records; 5th place: 100.
Card networks
28.6%
top 5 share of 2,103 records
Card network and acquirer names sit inside the top 5
Major payment network and acquirer assignees appear among the top 5 filers, which combined account for 28.6% of the 2,103 records in scope — filing activity that spans authentication, tokenisation and secure display claims rather than any single narrow mechanism.
Top 5 combined: 602 records.
Recent momentum
-100%
YoY, most active tracked filer
Even active filers have gone quiet in the latest tracked year
Recent-year momentum among the tracked assignees is uniformly weak: several show zero filings in the latest year and one specialist firm recorded a 100% year-on-year drop. Given the roughly 18-month publication lag, this reads as an incomplete recent window rather than a confirmed exit from filing.
Momentum figures cover the latest tracked year only.
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Worldpay Ltd | 2 | -33% |
| Licentia Group | 0 | — |
| MYPINPAD | 0 | — |
| BLUEFIN PAYMENT SYSTEMS LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Mastercard International Incorporated | 0 | — |
| Gilbarco Inc (US) | 0 | — |
| Visa International Service Association | 0 | — |
| Block Inc | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. 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.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's next
Where to take this analysis
The trend and concentration figures above are a starting point; the next steps depend on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, licensing scouting or roadmap planning.
Check freedom-to-operate against the concentrated claims
With 28.6% of the 2,103 records held by the top 5 assignees, a targeted claims read against those portfolios is more efficient than a blanket search across the full ranking.
Explore claims in EurekaTrack the under-claimed branches before they fill in
Sub-areas like remote firmware attestation and tamper-mesh-to-cloud alerting show thinner filing density relative to core G06Q and G06F claims, which is where new filings can still stake clean ground.
Monitor white space in EurekaWatch the 2025-2026 window as it fills in
Current filings for 2025 and 2026 are undercounted due to the publication lag; revisit the trend once those years mature to see whether the 2021-2024 decline persists.
Set up trend alerts in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. 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.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions on payment terminal security patents
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.
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.
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.
Smaller IPC clusters such as G07G (cash registers and checkout, 4.7% of records) and G08B (signalling and alarm systems, 2.8%) point to thinner filing density around checkout-integrated and alarm-adjacent claims compared to the dominant G06Q and G06F clusters. Sub-areas like remote firmware attestation for unattended terminals, epoxy potting sensor integration, and tamper-mesh-to-cloud alerting show comparatively less claim density relative to core secure-display and key-injection filings. These are not guarantees of an open field, but they are areas where the core hardware-security claim space is less crowded.
The United States leads with 846 records in this dataset, followed by the European Patent Office at 295 and WIPO PCT filings at 222. Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada follow with smaller but still meaningful counts of 137, 98 and 92 records respectively. This spread indicates that active filers in the space are pursuing multi-jurisdiction protection rather than concentrating on a single national office.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. 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.Run this in Eureka MCP
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company's registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.