SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cantaloupe Systems, the leading provider of wireless, cloud-computing solutions for the vending industry, announced its newest product: Seed Cashless®. Cashless vending, which enables consumers to make purchases from vending machines using their credit cards, eliminating the need for coins or bills, is the latest major advancement in the continuing evolution of machine merchandising.
“We’re excited to continue our relationship with Cantaloupe as they roll out innovative products to the millions of vending machines across America. Efficient and secure payments processing is an integral component of Seed Cashless, making it a perfect complement to Heartland’s state-of the art, real-time card processing solutions.”
Cantaloupe’s breakthrough Seed® system, monitors and reports all vending machine purchases in real-time over the Web, making it possible for vending operators to save money, boost profits and reduce their carbon footprint. Now, Seed Cashless offers significant new benefits for consumers, vending operators and commercial property managers where vending machines are placed:
- Consumers get a wider choice of products they can purchase with a convenient swipe of a debit or credit card without having to assemble piles of coins.
- Vending operators – who have, until now, been constrained by the psychologically important $1 price barrier – can offer a broader product variety and boost profit margins while maintaining total price flexibility. Additionally, the integration of Seed Cashless with Cantaloupe’s real-time reporting tools will, for the first time ever, enable operators to obtain end-to-end profitability reports taking into account processing, servicing and product costs and credit card fees. Cashless vending eliminates shrinkage ensuring that operators receive all the funds to which they are entitled.
- Commercial property managers who host vending machines will see their incomes rise as consumers spend more for a wider variety of products.
“When we designed Seed, we had cashless in mind from day one,” said Mandeep Arora, Cantaloupe’s CEO. “All fifty thousand Seed devices sold to date are easily upgradeable to Seed Cashless, enabling vending operators with existing Seed installations to add cashless with only modest additional cost. Cashless is not just a nice-to-have add on. It is the wave of the future and will soon become an absolute requirement to ensure vending profitability. Consumers today demand speed and convenience and operators want pricing and product flexibility, all of which Seed Cashless provides.”
Cantaloupe’s Seed Cashless will operate through its PCI-compliant Core Gateway to a processor. Current processing partners include First Data and Heartland Payment Systems. Bob Carr, Heartland’s Chairman and CEO commented: “We’re excited to continue our relationship with Cantaloupe as they roll out innovative products to the millions of vending machines across America. Efficient and secure payments processing is an integral component of Seed Cashless, making it a perfect complement to Heartland’s state-of the art, real-time card processing solutions.”
The Seed Cashless beta program is underway with commercial launch slated for Q3, 2010. Operators interested in participating in the beta program can obtain additional information by emailingcashless@cantaloupesys.com or calling Cantaloupe directly, 415-525-8100.
About Cantaloupe Systems
San Francisco-based Cantaloupe Systems, Inc. is the fastest-growing, wireless, vending solutions provider in the U.S. The company was founded in 2002 by young engineers Mandeep Arora, a second-generation vending professional, and Anant Agrawal to provide automated merchandising for the $30 billion vending industry. Installed in individual vending machines, the CantaloupeSeed device monitors all transactions and transmits the data securely via cellular networks and the Internet Cloud. The result: for the first time, vending operators know the state of each machine’s inventory without making a physical visit. Operators using Cantaloupe Seed Solution average $35,000 in annual savings per route, can replenish 80 percent more machines per week, and can reduce their carbon footprint by 40 percent through the elimination of unnecessary truck travel and smaller loads per truck.
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