“Customers are paying for food and beverages with their credit and debit cards, and it’s only natural that they would expect to pay the same way for countertop games, or music on jukeboxes,” said Mike Lawlor, USA Technologies’ vice-president of sales and business development.
“We are finalizing relationships to handle cashless technology and card processing services for countertop games, [other] amusement machines and jukeboxes with a number of leaders in the field,” he added.
The self-serve retail industry is looking beyond just swipe cards, considering consumer trends to contactless cards and mobile payment using cellular phones, the USAT vice-president pointed out. Global giants including PayPal, Google, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are fast moving into the mobile commerce space, and when combined with the significant ramp-up of NFC-enabled cellphones (Near Field Communications), all indications point to enormous growth in mobile commerce in 2011, 2012 and beyond.
