Over the last five years, the number of locations worldwide at which credit and debit cards can be used to purchase goods and services has more than doubled. The largest global networks of merchant acceptance locations at midyear 2024 were managed by Visa and Mastercard. The footprint for both networks exceeded 150 million locations in more than 200 countries and territories. Card-not-present and card-present locations grew by double digits over the last 12 months. Card-present growth was fueled by softPOS—the use of smartphones and tablet devices, mostly Android-based—that can accept c...