Credit Card Vending Machines

In response to customer demand for vending machines that don’t require the hassle of exact change, manufacturers are focusing their development efforts on creating units that accept credit and debit card payments. More and more, vending machine owners are preferring to purchase models that allow for credit card use. Statistics show that the average amount of money a customer spends in a cash-only vending machine is $1.06. However, when credit cards are accepted, people spend an average of $1.87. That represents a 63 percent spike in sales. Studies also show that customers are much more likely to purchase multiple items from a vending machine that allows credit card payment.

Why? The simple answer is convenience. One of the factors that led to a decline in the vending machine industry was the inconvenience of requiring exact change. Fishing for exact change is cumbersome and annoying for customers who find they don’t have the correct amount on hand. The introduction of bank-note-reading technology improved matters, but still left customers with their hands full of change after making purchases with a larger-denomination notes (such as $10 and $20 bills). Most vending machines that offer to make change for customers provide just that–mounds of coins. While such machines can drum up additional sales in customers who purchase more items to reduce the number of coins they receive for change, equal numbers simply choose to buy nothing at all.

Credit Card Vending Machines Offer Maximum Purchasing Convenience

Market research indicates that customers actually prefer to make vending machine purchases with credit cards. People are approximately 45 percent more likely to make a vending machine purchase if the machine accepts plastic payments. These machines not only encourage spending (because the customer doesn’t have to part with actual cash), but vendors can also charge premium rates for goods when credit card sales are offered. For example, a soft drink that would normally retail for $1.25 in a cash-only vending machine can fetch as much as $2 from a credit card vending machine. The electronic technology that powers credit card vending machines allows operators to customize pricing, which is usually adjusted upwards to reflect the slightly increased costs associated with accepting payments. These additional costs, levied by the financial institutions that issue credit and debit cards, are more than recovered by the premiums vendors can place on the items they sell.

Credit card vending machines also permit owners to track sales information in ways that were not possible prior to the advent of electronic technology. Because sales are processed using a centralized data system such as a local area network (LAN), information such as sale dates, times, items purchased and total expenditure are recorded. Proprietors can then review this information to learn which items are hot sellers, what times of day yield the most sales and how much the average customer is spending. Credit card vending machines provide proprietors with advanced business management tools, allowing them to tweak their operations to maximize profit potential and focus their efforts on providing the items their customers purchase most often.