Commentary
'No-touch': vending's coming change
We, as an industry, must offer an option that eliminates any contact with the machine in order to create a safe and truly touch-free vending transaction.
July 27, 2020 by Paresh Patel
It is baffling when you think about how the consumer experience has changed over the years. People have gone from shopping in the store to ordering online.
Companies like Amazon have made online shopping a staple with their simple mobile app and quick delivery service. It is hard to look back and remember a day when you had to go from store to store to shop for what you need.
Even over the past few months, there have been significant changes to how consumers do things like order meals, buy groceries or shop for clothes. Curbside pickup has gone from an option at select stores to the primary method of transactions just about anywhere. Companies have made it their priority to innovate and adapt, and many have been successful.
However, when you look at the consumer's experience with payment kiosks and vending, not much has changed since the very beginning. Whether it is with cash, coin or card, consumers insert payment and then press a button or make a selection on a keypad to dispense a product. Though the look and feel may have changed slightly, the experience is essentially the same.
As the COVID-19 pandemic shows little signs of slowing down, a cadre of industry leaders has come together to reinvent the consumer's experience with unattended retail and transform it into a touch-free experience.
Selections must be touchless
Although modern machines may offer contactless or NFC payment options such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, virtually none are equipped to accept selection without physical contact, meaning the consumer still has to touch the machine to complete their purchase. With such a big push toward contactless transactions across all industries, simply having touch-free payment is not enough. We, as an industry, must offer an option that eliminates any contact with the machine in order to create a safe and truly touch-free vending transaction.
To make this happen, the solution has to come from the industry itself. Other contactless payment options can communicate with the machine's readers, but the communication has to go deeper into the machine. Operators need an end-to-end solution that allows consumers to not only digitally pay for their purchases, but also make their product selection within proximity of the machine — never having to touch the machine itself.
No one company can create this end-to-end solution as it takes coordination among the machine, the payment acceptance hardware and the mobile solution provider. This is the reason we have seen little improvement in the overall experience.
Industry leaders see the need
With high consumer demand for touch-free, the leaders of the industry have come together to offer operators a solution that meets this demand. While a solution like this can be built into machines from the start, it must also be plug-and-play to allow operators to make this update as quickly as possible on machines they already own. In a situation like this, these solutions must be accessible, attainable and easily implemented.
The more the industry gets on board with this new wave of technology, the better the consumer experience can be across the board and the public perception of the vending industry will improve.
In addition to safety benefits, machine owners can also use the touchless payment feature to provide more inclusive payment options which promote sales through increased usage and access to millions of payment app users to which they can offer promotions and special offers to keep them engaged.
Solutions like this can also help machine operators simplify their business. There is so much work that goes into managing cash, especially when dealing with coin-operated machines. So many operators tend to think that since there is no cost associated with accepting it at the machine, that cash is free. While it does not come with the processing fees that a credit card reader would, for example, cash does still come at a cost. Often, it costs extra time and effort that operators could be using to pour back into creating a great experience for customers. The more digital payment operators are able to accept, the less cash they have to manage and the simpler their job will be.
This technology is crucial in the current environment but will also benefit the industry long past the pandemic. Providing a much faster and simpler user experience is something that will always be in demand. If operators are able to adapt quickly, they will not only succeed during these times, but in the months and years to come as well. Vending may not have been on the forefront of innovation for the last decade, but it can lead the charge for the next one.
For an update on how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting convenience services, click here.
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