Contactless payment in a wide range of self-service retail applications is catching on, but how quickly? A representative of USA Technologies recently predicted contactless dominance in all retail venues, including vending, within just two years. That’s a pretty big statement, considering that the majority of cards in people’s wallets today have a mag stripe…and those people are not yet familiar with tapping. It has taken Americans over a decade to really embrace “swiping” and feel comfortable with the security of this type of payment method. We think a safer bet is the growth of contactless mobile payment, especially considering the fact that most people today carry a mobile device. This is where the opportunity for contactless payment growth lies, yet even so, it may be still too early to make any certain predictions. (more…)

An operator recently asked us what equipment he would need to monitor a 6 vending machine location. I wanted to share my response:

In order to remotely monitor 1 or more vending machines, you’ll need an MEI telemeter in each machine.  MEI is unique in only requiring 1 of the machines to use a cellular modem to call out with all the others networked to talk to the one machine calling out.  You can set the type of alarms you want to monitor and whether you want the machines to call out at a set time or as soon as an alarm is triggered.