Fun Plaza Family Fun Center Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, US has installed Intercard’s cashless payment system.
The decision to upgrade the site, first opened in 1938, was made by the third generation owner Jimmy Waldorf.
Along with eliminating coin and ticket jams, the leading cause of downtime in arcade machines, Waldorf was able to lower his labour costs and make more efficient use of his staff. Fun Plaza’s extensive Intercard system has more than 300 iReaders plus five Intercard iTeller kiosks as well as five balance and recycle stations that let customers easily check their redemption points between plays.
Waldorf did hesitate before installing card readers on his prized baseball machines, worried that the modern technology would detract from the nostalgic experience. “But I have realised that maybe 90 per cent of the people that come into the arcade are using the card and only 10 per cent are using quarters,” he said. “So only 10 per cent of my people are playing the baseballs and you know, some of my baseballs are losing out.”
Fortunately his flexible Intercard system allowed him to set up the machines to take cards as well as quarters. “I went ahead and put card readers on the baseball machines and now I got back to 100 per cent of the people having the ability to play the games, whether they use quarters or they use card swipe.”
Waldorf, who had his system installed in February 2019 during his off-season, saw a 25 per cent jump in revenue from card play. Now that the summer season has started, he says revenues are up 30-40 per cent, although he concedes some of that can be attributed to having added air-conditioning.
