As society becomes increasingly cashless, adding credit card readers to your vending machines should be a top priority. The industry is rapidly moving away from the traditional dollar bill validators and coin mechanisms as new technology–largely driven by consumers–adds more convenience. Many operators have seen substantial growth in sales with the use of cashless payment options, namely credit card readers. Here are seven reasons for you to follow suit.
Why You Should Install Credit Card Readers On Your Vending Machines
1. Increases Dollar Spent Per Transaction
According to research, purchasing products with a credit card can dull the pain of spending money in two ways. First, the time between swiping the card and receiving the bill significantly reduces immediate buyers remorse. Second, purchases sometimes become molded together as one, therefore it’s harder to separate the cost of individual items. That means people end up spending more because the process is less transparent than paying with actual cash. So when customers approach your vending machine and are ready to swipe, they’re likely to spend more.
2. You Can Charge a Convenience Fee
A lot of data management and processing goes into credit card readers, which comes at a cost. You can capitalize on this by charging a small fee for using credit cards on your vending machines. For example, you can add a $.25 upcharge per item that covers fees and allows you to make a small profit.
3. Better Reporting & Data
Using credit card readers on your vending machines in conjunction with a Vending Management System (VMS) improves accuracy in reporting sales. You can further use the data from these reports to make decisions about what product to stock in the machines. In other words, you can gain valuable insight into consumer trends at specific accounts and make strategic decisions to maximize revenue.
4. Some Accounts Simply Require Them
Certain locations might require your vending machines to have credit card readers on them, such as malls, train stations, airports, and prisons. These accounts typically yield a lot of revenue as they are high volume locations, so if you want to win the bids for those locations you will need credit card readers.
5. Save Time on Counting Cash
Using credit card readers on your vending equipment allows revenue to get directly sent to your bank account, thus eliminating the time spent on counting cash which can prove to be cumbersome and more susceptible to errors.
6. Less Money Lost from Vandalism
One of the main reasons for vending machine vandalism is to steal the cash inside the machine. Switching to credit card readers eliminates the amount of actual money inside the machine, if not entirely if the equipment solely has credit card readers.
7. Increases Overall Sales
Last but not least, just think about all the people who have walked right by your vending machine because they didn’t have cash and the equipment didn’t have a credit card reader.