Thread: Vending machines now accepting Visa for payments?

I saw on the news that a company called USA Technologies went into a deal with Visa to outfit thousands of vending machines with e-ports to pay with credit cards. That is good news because I have had that happen to me somewhat regularly where I don't have the cash on hand to pay for a bag of chips or something. They must have been able to negotiate some special agreement though for the credit card processing fees on those because paying 30 cents for a dollar purchases of a dollar or less wouldn't fly.

i find this kind of surprising that visa would even bother to offer credit cards on vending machines these days. with fast food joints open 24/7 and quickie marts on every corner vending machines have become a thing of the past the last few years. i hardly ever see them anywhere. maybe a pop machine but thats all i ever see. you no longer see the snack ones let alone the hot coffee or sandwich vending machines

bottom line is that credit card terminals for vending machines are a lost cause about a decade or two too late IMO

I know that here in Melbourne, Australia where I live at one of the main stations Southern Cross there are vending machines. The vending machines accepts coins, notes ($5 and $10 only) and also Mastercard and Visa. They have been around here for about a year now.

There have been attempts for a long time to smooth the process of using credit cards for "micropayments" as you said. The transaction fees kill it. Visa and Mastercard are generally supportive of this because they want to expand and have very few other types of payments to expand into. At the same time it is not a huge market. So, this is not very surprising.

By the way, the reason you get double or triple points on gas purchase, groceries, etc. is because those are types of transactions the credit card companies want to gain more market share in. People still widely use gas company cards for gas and cash/checks for groceries. By offering incentives they get more market share.