The rise of self-service kiosks in the Middle East

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KIBIS

3 min readMar 13, 2019

Kiosks are favorably being adopted throughout the Middle East region and the world because of the ease of transaction offered by the self-service technology.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign designed the first self-service kiosk in 1977. The interactive kiosk was created to provide campus information.

The entire system was installed in 1985 that comprised of 600 kiosks and was used by 30,000 individuals within the first six weeks. Six years following this installation, the first commercial kiosk complete with an internet connection was exhibited at Comdex in 1991.

Since this time, the kiosk market has continued to expand by multiple folds and are serving as an efficient alternative for enhancing customer satisfaction. They are not only preferable by the tech-savvy and digitally inclined users but, also helpful for those who are denied digital inclusion because of being unbanked. The service industry is taking complete advantage of self-service kiosks to increase the efficiency of operations.

These factors are collectively contributing to the greater adoption of kiosks in sectors where the volume of routine transactions and customer queries is huge.These can be adequately handled by employing self-sustainable machine interfaces in these facilities.

Organizations that employ kiosks instead of manpower have been able to enormously cut down on their costs. In the coming years, global kiosk market is expected to amass substantial power because of its extensive usage across various sectors.

According to a study conducted by Transparency Market Research, the volume of the kiosk market is expected to touch 43,376 thousand units by 2026, increasing at a CAGR of 7.1%.

The forecast period might observe a rise in demand for kiosks in retail and education sectors. Kiosk market receives a significant amount of revenue from the retail Industry. The retail and e-commerce sector has continued to increase its demand for kiosks which is expected to prevail in the forecast period as well.

The banking sector is also standing as a significant end-user of kiosks along with the advertisement sector. Recent few years have seen a substantial rise in the adoption of kiosks in the advertisement industry. It is expected that the ticketing kiosks and patient interactive kiosks will also rise at a CAGR of 11.1% and 9.0%, respectively.

The patient interactive self-service kiosk solutions have a user-friendly implementation process that has made them a more preferred option over medical records and clinical systems. A significant rise in vending machine kiosks is also expected in the forecast period.

The principal reason for the growing popularity of kiosks is its capability of streamlining customer interaction process along with grounding a real-time interaction between the customer and kiosks. This, in turn, triggers sales in a broad arena of industries. Resultantly, several businesses are including kiosks marketing as a crucial element of their profit increasing strategy. However, the possibility of data theft is expected to stall the growth of kiosks adoption for the coming few years. To combat this problem, the self-service industry is being integrated with Blockchain technology that makes the data immutable and secure. KIBIS kiosks are integrating the advantages of kiosks with the security of Blockchain.

The Middle East has served as a fertile ground for the growth of self-service kiosks. Stratistics MRC, a reputable global research company, had conducted a survey which highlighted the fact that kiosks in the Middle-East witnessed financial transactions worth $45 billion every year. These self-service transactions are anticipated to reach $80 billion in the coming four years with the increased adoption of self-service solutions.

In recent years, kiosks in the UAE has been able to win the trust of customers that is evident from the increased volume of transaction. Retailers, government agencies, restaurants and healthcare organizations are putting in their money in self-service technology to enhance the satisfaction of their customers.

The ease provided by self-service bill pay and omission of long queues in the bill payment facilities is especially attractive for the customers.

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