Money validating, coins, bills, tickets, cards, is always a dull subject – dull but devastatingly important, especially if the wrong choices are made by machine manufacturers and operators.
It is a market which is becoming infinitely more interesting right now, since Crane Payment Solutions stepped in to buy MEI a week or so ago, for $820m. Assuming that deal goes through, then the battle lines will be redrawn on that front very quickly.
Crane will then encompass three big names in bill validating in machines, Ardac (Money Controls), Cashflow (Cashcode) and MEI. Together they are bigger than the next biggest, which I suspect will be JCM. Biggest isn’t always best, of course, but the biggest mostly don’t get that way without reason.
And will Crane keep all three brands going? Or will it somehow merge them? Does it make sense to have three in-house brands competing with one another?
Beyond the Crane companies and JCM, there aren’t many more out there to be picked off. There is the excellent and entrepreneurial Innovative, there’s AstroSystems of course and the Taiwanese specialists ICT, but with great respect to them all, they are beginning to be dwarfed by this new conglomerate.
Bills are of course becoming increasingly important in machines, as more jurisdictions permit their use in addition to coins or otherwise cashless systems. MEI is of course also strong in coin validators, as are other Crane companies such as NRI and Money Controls. That sector too is consolidating, therefore. Who’s left? JCM of course doesn’t do coins, and there are only a few credible options in that sector, such as Münzprüfer in Germany, Azkoyen in Spain and a small clutch of Italian companies.
The entire business of handling the money that goes through machines is becoming fascinating - and beyond the obvious necessities of simply paying to play. Like the AWP industry, payment systems within the machines themselves are polarising into fewer hands.
The machine producers must be becoming concerned; after all, each of them likes to have more than one recognised supplier, otherwise he is likely to be held to ransom.
It isn’t necessarily a good thing, but is certainly a sign of the times.
