NFC Times Exclusive Insight – U.S.-based unattended retail payments company USA Technologies had nearly 300,000 NFC-enabled cashless payment terminals connected to its network as of the end of the 2015 fiscal year and expects that to grow strongly next year, as mobile-payments services such as Android Pay roll out, the company said.

USAT has 333,000 cashless readers at unattended points of sale in the U.S. connected to its ePort Connect service for payment processing and other payment services, and during a conference call recently to discuss its fiscal fourth quarter and fiscal year 2015 results, CEO Steve Herbert said, “We are closing in on approximately 300,000 of those 333,000 being NFC-enabled.” He added, “It’s a very large portion of the base. We believe we represent the nation’s largest NFC mobile-payments footprint handled by one company.”

USAT claims that 100% of its new ePort connections are now NFC-enabled readers.