Payments

Cashless drives small transaction sales in vending, amusements

Image provided by Cantaloupe Inc.

April 26, 2023

Cashless payments continue to expand, even for small ticket (under $10) transactions, according to the 2023 Micropayment Trends Report conducted by Cantaloupe Inc., a digital payments and software services company that provides end-to-end technology solutions to power self-service commerce.

The survey studied transactions less than $10 at food and beverage vending and at amusement machines throughout the U.S. and Canada in 2022, according to a press release on the survey. The results, which covered a sample of more than 700,000 active Cantaloupe card readers, showed that consumers are increasingly using cashless payment methods for smaller ticket transactions.

Consumers spent more than $2.5 billion at food and beverage vending machines in 2022, a 19% increase over 2021, according to the study. At those particular machines, cashless payments accounted for 67% of all sales in 2022, an increase of 11% from 2021.

Of those cashless sales, tap-to-pay made up an average 53% of cashless sales for the year. In terms of consumer purchases, the study found that the average cashless ticket size for food and beverage vending machine purchases was $2.11, compared to only $1.36 for cash purchases.

In the amusement category, the data around cash versus cashless payments follows a similar pattern. Cashless payments made up an average of 73% of total sales volume at amusement gaming machines in 2022.

Additionally, the average cashless ticket size at amusement gaming machines for play purchases was $5.32, compared to only 93 cents for cash purchases. This difference highlights that consumers on average will spend five times more when initiating or extending their play using a cashless payment method at an amusement gaming machine.

The report also focused on how larger economic trends impacted the self-service retail industry. With concerns about inflation on the price of consumer goods this past year, vending particularly could have been negatively impacted. However, the report showed that even as the rate of inflation increased (peaking in June 2022 at 9.1%), and even as operators increased prices in response, vending machine purchases remained stable.

Additionally, the adoption of Europay, Mastercard and Visa security standards for payment cards also has had an impact on self-service retail. In 2022, the year that EMV became the new normal at food and beverage vending machines, self-service kiosks and micro markets, EMV payments grew more than 350% as a share of cashless sales at food and beverage vending machines.