Credit card-enabled vending machines are making inroads at new, untapped retail locations such as airports, fast-food restaurants and parking lots as merchants realize the potential to increase their profit margins. Apart from the ability to reach consumers 24 hours a day, vending machines enable merchants to launch new products and extend their retail brands. Cashless payments, as a way to eliminate coinage from the purchase cycle, improve the sales potential at vending machines, while McDonalds’ reports that on average, consumers spend USD 1 more per purchase from a vending machine.

Typically, the US vending machine market has centered on purchases of less than a dollar, and in terms of value, is estimated at USD 20 billion to USD 25 billion per year. This is just half the size of its Japanese counterpart, where blue jeans and expensive, boxed lunches are regularly bought at dispensing machines. Given the increasing use of credit cards at vending machines, however, manufacturers have to convince consumers that if their purchase is not delivered, their credit card will not be charged, possibly by highlighting the machine’s delivery guarantee system.

On the basis that consumers are more likely to buy higher-priced items from vending machines if credit cards are accepted, vendors like Trintech are developing self-serve payment solutions to enable merchants to reach their consumers. In any context, from pay-at-the-pump environments, to vending machines, self-service payment technology is a sales tool that also speeds customer transactions. Two years after installing self-serve kiosks, one McDonald’s franchise in central Florida, has found these to handle 45 per cent of its sales volume, even if its counters are clear.

(The Boston Herald)