USA Technologies, Inc. (USAT), ("USAT"), a leader of wireless, cashless payment and M2M telemetry solutions for small-ticket, self-serve retailing industries, and the Navy Exchange Service Command (NEXCOM) will begin to make available cashless payment options using USAT's ePort and ePort Connect service at select pilot Navy Exchanges located on U.S. Naval installations.
"NEXCOM operates approximately 11,000 combined contracted and direct run vending machines on U.S. Naval bases across the country," said Gerard Fantano, NEXCOM's vending branch manager. "To date, only a small number of contracted beverage machines have incorporated cashless options to our customers. Based on industry trends and the increased usage of cashless options, we are piloting the expansion on Navy owned and operated machines to evaluate the economic benefits and customer acceptance."
During the pilot test period with USAT, NEXCOM's goal is to learn about the benefits of cashless from a deployment of up to 200 cashless terminals and, subject to profitability, to possibly expand to selected machines nationwide.
"We are pleased to welcome NEXCOM to USAT's growing list of customers for cashless payment and M2M telemetry," said USAT's vice president of sales and business development, Michael K. Lawlor. "We anticipate that NEXCOM's returns would be similar to what other USAT customers experience, and our objective with NEXCOM is to move system-wide. We already know that cashless usage in other military installations USAT serves continues to be well above average. For example, based on our 2013 ePort Connect Cashless Knowledge Base, which evaluated data and channel information from approximately 62,000 ePort Connect cashless vending terminals that had at least $2,000 in annualized cashless sales over a three-month period between January and March 2013, cashless as a percent of total sales averaged 46% for the military channel (non-Navy) compared to an overall average of 32%.
We are looking forward to working with NEXCOM to demonstrate the benefits of cashless and the ease with which they can continue to increase their cashless requirements with USAT."
NEXCOM will be utilizing USAT's ePort NFC enabled cashless payment technology and ePort Connect service, a one-stop service that includes integrated wireless activation, pre-negotiated discounted fees on small-ticket purchases, a single blended rate for transaction processing, 24 x 7 customer service, and web-based customer reporting.