The way we play games is evolving but so too is the way we pay for them – InterGame explores the latest developments in payments technologies.
HOW consumers pay for goods and services is changing. What is driving those changes - or, more accurately, who is driving those changes - is interesting. The generally accepted wisdom is that fewer people are using cash for purchases than in the past, preferring instead to use debit and credit cards. Yet, it is also clear that in some gaming markets, the sound of cascading coins is intrinsic to the experience itself.
In the amusement sector, where debit card-based payment systems are widely used, acceptance of cashless operations is fairly high. That being said, eliminating cash from the process entirely is a long way off. Then there’s the emergence in recent years of mobile payment technologies, which are already gaining traction in a host of different fields, and, to a lesser extent, peer-to-peer currencies such as Bitcoin.
The question then, if one accepts that there is a shift in the way payments are made, is whether there is a general move away from cash because consumers prefer to handle fewer coins and banknotes themselves, or whether operators are seeking the benefits of fewer cash handling processes and are therefore pushing the use of new technologies. Where the issue becomes less clear cut, however, is whether in order to gain such efficiencies and increased security, an operator has to choose to go cashless or whether, through their ingenuity, cash handling equipment manufacturers are able to deliver those same benefits at the machine.
Take, for example, a gaming arcade housing dozens of machines. If each machine is geared toward accepting, validating and processing payments and payouts, each machine therefore holds significant sums of cash internally. If those same machines were equipped with ticket-in, ticket out facilities or card swipers, the amount of cash stored within each would be reduced significantly, or in the case of the latter, entirely. Where adult gaming centres – arcades using gaming machines only, rather than a mix of gaming and amusements – have gone cashless, it has released the stored cash back to the operator’s bank account. With some major chains, this could involve millions.
Read the full article in the July issue of InterGame
