When looking for a backup SIM or a dedicated connection for a Point of Sale system, many retailers drastically overestimate their requirements. So, how much data does a card machine use?
The answer is: surprisingly little.
The Size of a Transaction
A standard chip-and-pin or contactless transaction does not involve sending images or heavy data files. It involves sending a tiny, highly encrypted string of text containing the merchant ID, the card token, and the transaction amount.
- A single transaction typically uses between 2 Kilobytes (KB) and 10 Kilobytes (KB) of data.
- There are 1,000 Kilobytes in a Megabyte (MB).
- This means you can process roughly 100 to 500 transactions per single Megabyte of data.
Even a busy coffee shop processing 500 transactions a day will likely use less than 50MB to 100MB of data per month purely for payments.
Beware the Bloatware
However, modern smart terminals (like Android-based POS systems) also use data to download software updates, sync inventory with the cloud, or update digital receipts. This background activity can push usage up to 500MB or 1GB per month.
The M2M Solution
Because payment data usage is so low, buying a £15/month consumer SIM with 10GB of data is a complete waste of money.
Anywhere SIM provides specialized, cost-effective M2M (Machine-to-Machine) data plans designed exactly for the retail sector. We offer low-data tariffs (e.g., 100MB or 500MB) that give you the ultimate reliability of unsteered multi-network roaming without charging you for gigabytes of bandwidth you will never use.