Revenue is the most important KPI of almost any business. In the vending and coffee industry, revenue growth can be achieved by stocking the right products, placing the machine in the right location, and offering the right payment methods. Historically, vending and coffee machines have been all about cash. But over the last two years, things have changed, with cash slowly (or quickly) being replaced by faster and cleaner ways to pay.
In some countries, like Sweden, over 80% of all retail transactions are now non-cash transactions. While other countries still have a long way to go, contactless transactions are experiencing massive year-on-year growth. This shift directly impacts the vending and coffee businesses, as consumers start preferring solutions that do not involve handling physical cash. Still, not all devices in the field are equipped with payment options that customers demand, and it’s high time this changed.
If you’re not offering contactless solutions on your machines yet, you are missing out on a huge opportunity. Find out five reasons why contactless payments are a must for any vending and coffee business.
1. Benefit from impulse buying
Our smartphones are seemingly our best friends – they travel everywhere with us. They often come with cases with a slot for a payment card. Or the phone itself acts as a payment card with Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Samsung Pay. This device means that customers are much more susceptible to impulse buying.
Imagine yourself walking by a vending machine and noticing a snack that gives you a craving – you must be able to satisfy this immediately, or you’ll forget it in a few seconds. Unless your customers are walking around with a wallet full of coins, you must offer a payment option that’s quick and effortless, and contactless payments. With an easy tap, you turn the onlooker into a customer.
2. Serve more customers
Contactless is easy. It takes less time to tap the card or the phone, receive the product, and leave than fumble around for coins or banknotes, insert them one by one, collect change, and risk experiencing a coin jam. Plus, a coin changer can run out of change, which can completely halt sales.
All of these actions take up precious time, which you can avoid with Vendon contactless payments. Essentially, your machine can serve more people within the same period of time which leads to shorter queues and revenue growth.
3. Make cash worries seem so far away
A vending or coffee machine can store hundreds of euros in cash at any given time – in the cashbox, the bill stacker, and the coin changer. This means a vending machine can be a very tempting target – and in case the funds are pocketed by someone else, you’re at a loss. With contactless, all your funds are safe since there’s no handling of physical cash at all.
Even if contactless is just one of the payment options you offer, many customers will use their card instead of cash, and that will decrease the amount of cash you have to worry about.
4. Free up your funds
When you’re using Contactless payments, there’s no need for a coin changer that will store more than a hundred euros in change, or a cashbox that stores the money for you until you arrive to collect it once a week or so. This means some funds are temporarily or permanently frozen up across tens, hundreds, or even thousands of machines. Vendon Contactless takes this pain away – you get daily payouts, free of charge, so you can use the funds immediately for further investments in the growth of your business.
5. Provide exceptional support
Lastly, it’s vital to have a plan for when things don’t go as expected. With Vendon Contactless, support is a breeze.
In case the machine dispenses a product with damaged packaging, or the item is spoiled, you can refund the customer in a second. Transaction management is seamlessly integrated into Vendon Cloud, giving you complete control of the situation.
That’s not it; you’ll see not just the successful transactions, but those that did not go through for some reason, for instance, the customer’s card had insufficient funds. Consequently, you can troubleshoot any issues and guide the customer who’s at the machine. Great support can really make a difference!
Sounds convincing? We thought so.
Start optimizing your coffee business today and boost your revenue – get in touch with us at grow@vendon.net or your local distributor.
