You are in:
Money Matters
Vendors of cash-handling systems are striving to provide operators with ever more speed and security in transactions. We look at some of the latest products – and some innovations which could shape the next generation of casino cash technology.
While electronic payments are growing in popularity, cash remains the lifeblood of many casinos, and cash-handling systems are a vital interface between the customer and the business. When running effectively, they should be hardly noticeable to either – but if they’re not up to scratch, the whole transaction can fail, depriving the casino of revenue not only now but also in the future, as a frustrated customer departs never to return. So the choice of cash-handling technology can have a significant impact on profitability, particularly for slots, where there is no human intermediary between player and game. And although the fundamental requirements of cash handling may not change any faster than cash itself does, it is a far from static market; innovative refinements to the basic solutions continue to appear. On JCM’s stand at G2E Asia in Macau, for example, was a concept – and that’s an important distinction, as it was not the finished product – that will make its way on to almost every table game in Asia, if JCM can deliver. Some background: a few years ago, JCM developed Trident, a bill validator fitted to a card table. A neat idea, and one that can help a casino on the accounting side no end – but no use at all in a country where large numbers of low-denomination bills are used on table games. This would slow the game down to the point where its benefits are far outweighed by potential revenue loss and customer unhappiness. Now, for Macau and other similar markets, JCM has worked with German company Giesecke & Devrient to develop Project 8, a note sorter attached to the table game. A player buys into the game by proffering notes to the dealer in the usual way; the dealer then drops the notes into the sorter, where they are held in escrow so that the dealer can communicate to the player the value of the notes; if the player agrees, the gaming chips are issued. With the cash held in escrow rather than going right into the drop box, the player has the option to call the money back if they disagree with the reader’s evaluation, for example. The whole process, including communication between dealer and customer as well as the actual sorting, takes around 15 seconds for a dozen notes. The benefits are more play, less downtime, happier players and increased profits: JCM estimates that this could lead to up to an hour of extra gameplay a day. The sorter will work with two 1700-note cash boxes, so it won’t need to be emptied too frequently. And once this system is connected to JCM’s Intelligent Cash Box, the security benefits are huge. As JCM’s Tom Nieman explained: “No more drop box, no more not knowing how much money is on the table – today it’s a world in which accountability is a real priority. “It’s about the potential of high-speed transaction automation in table games. Because of the density of table gaming here in Macau, the buy-ins are so large and the number of notes so great there is a recurring break point in games. To process a buy-in, the notes are fanned and inspected with a wand, approved by the pit boss collected and diapered into a drop box; we’ve timed this process and it can take over two minutes for 40 notes to be accepted. In that break point no-one is making any money, the player can’t play; nobody wins.” As it stands, the prototype is too bulky to be workable – but if JCM can bring its size down, this is a surefire winner for Asian casinos. And it’s not the only innovation in the pipeline from JCM. The company has recently signed an agreement with Techfirm, a mobile payments specialist, to jointly develop a pay-by-mobile system for bill validators. It is expected that this will, for example, allow slots that are fitted with JCM bill validators to also accept e-payments from customers’ phones. “This is an incredibly exciting field,” said JCM Global President Aki Isoi. “Given the extensive research and announced plans from major developers, it is clear the mobile e-money technology market will grow rapidly as Android CS technology expands and becomes more available. Consumers’ use of mobile phones as digital wallets is spreading rapidly, and we have every reason to believe this trend will continue to grow globally.” That Techfirm deal is just one sign of JCM’s apparent ambition to become a one-stop shop for casinos. For instance, it has also entered a partnership with Nanoptix, the maker of thermal printers. Not only will products such as that company’s main gaming printer, the PayCheck 4, be relaunched under the JCM brand, but there could be spin-offs in cash handling too, as JCM gains access to Nanoptix’s R&D resources. High capacity At Crane Payment Solutions, a successful trial period has now led to the launch of the new CashCode One 2500-note cash box for cash redemption terminals. This high capacity eliminates the need for emergency drops and reduces drop frequency significantly. Other benefits for casinos include a universal design to accept all currencies, a single hardware platform reducing support and operation costs, and flexible architecture. “The 2500-note cash box was well received at G2E Asia, as were all our products. It was the first time we’d exhibited at the showas Crane Payment Solutions and so we were able to show customers our enhanced product range,” said Bill Murphy, Sales Director for Asia at Money Controls, which is part of the Crane Payment Solutions group. While the CashCode One helps improve operational efficiency, other products from the Crane group focus on security. Money Controls’ DES-encrypted units, which have been well-received since their launch last year, offer a significant weapon in combating fraud. Every payment device and machine can potentially have a different DES key, which can be changed by the host machine – not the case with most encryption protocols. In fact, the machine’s software can be programmed to change the key as frequently as every few minutes. ccTalk DES encryption is a further development of the ccTalk protocol, widely accepted as the industry standard. Products now available with ccTalk DES encryption include Money Controls’ Ardac Elite and the Universal Hopper. And another part of the Crane Payment Solutions group, NRI, is focusing on coin validation with its V2 Eagle validator. The firm’s MFT validation technology simultaneously processes 16 measurement parameters for each of the coin channels. This validation technology has already been tried and tested in the Currenza C2 coin changer, and NRI says it will be used in all its future coin validation and sorting systems. For fraud protection, meanwhile, the V2 Eagle has an arsenal of tools including optical string recognition, sorter monitoring, coin timing and protocol encryption. All change Game type and typical transaction value are important considerations when considering cash-handling systems, and the features to look for in coin units are somewhat different to those in bank-note devices. For example, the Hopper Flow is the latest addition to the coin payout hopper family at Suzo Happ, which offers gaming-industry customers both its own products and those from other manufacturers. The challenge, according to the firm, is to maintain a high payout rate, and the Hopper Flow can pay out up to seven coins per second. Moreover, although the Hopper Flow is a single-denomination hopper it requires no adjustments if the coin denomination changes. Both capacity and payout speeds are key factors on the hopper shopper’s checklist. Suzo Happ’s Evolution – an alternative to upright hoppers – has a coin capacity of up to 1100 coins and has a payout rate of four coins per second. The sturdy motor ensures longevity, and the electronics are mounted on one board that can be removed for cleaning. The cashless alternative Are you tied to cash? DRGT suggests not – the Belgian firm, whose users include the four Partouche casinos in its home country, is encouraging operators to recognise that moving to cashless payments doesn’t necessarily mean replacing the entire slot floor. Its payment technology can, according to the firm, be retrofitted to long-serving machines as well as new ones. “Operators often face the predicament that the players like older slots, but they could not go cashless on their entire estate,” said Michiel van Dam, Co-Founder and COO of DRGT. “The combination of older with new slots means that players have the greatest gaming choice. DRGT opens the door to cashless on every type of gaming machine. Furthermore, the fact that all slots can be linked via [DRGT’s product] drJackpot means the door has also opened for jackpot systems on all types of gaming machines as well.” Cash advance MEI says the SC Advance, the next-generation product in the Cashflow SC line, will “raise the bar of performance expectations in the metrics that matter most – driving improvements in both the player experience and operator profitability”. This is achieved through a range of improvements to the underlying technology. An upgraded recognition system provides proactive security by utilising transmissive sensors to see all the way through notes in multiple wavelengths, while faster bill-to-bill speed enhances the player experience and speeds up transactions to expand throughput. Expanded memory allows more notes to be recognised in a specific release of firmware. Comprehensive barcode recognition processes barcode coupons in all four directions and improves acceptance on multi-width currencies, and an upgrade to USB 2.0 speeds up communications with the host machine and even potentially expands functionality. Because the enhancements are localised to the acceptor head, SC Advance can work hand-in-hand with legacy Cashflow SC units already in the field. This capability is facilitated by intelligent support tools that will be able to sense the product version and provide the appropriate software. SC Advance is compatible not only with previous versions, but also with product extensions that have expanded the reach of bill acceptors from the slot machine to the entire cash-management process. MEI says that Easitrax Soft Count, for example, has changed rapidly operators’ expectations of what a bill acceptor can offer – building an installed base of more than 50,000 games in 18 months by improving efficiencies associated with the cash-drop process.
