How Payment Methods Impact Game Play

I remember my early days around 1980 collecting quarters from our video games throughout multiple locations.  It was quite rewarding at the time pulling a coin bucket from a game and barely being able to remove it because it was overflowing with quarters. 

The next steps were spending a lot of time counting and reconciling the quarters, and then recycling them back through a coin changer.  When I was done counting and handling coins, my fingers were black due to the filth on the surface.  At the time, this was the best method to provide game play to the player.

Fast forward to 2020, and we are now in a society that wants to spend money easily and quickly.  Asking our customer to take the necessary steps to get cash from an ATM, finding an employee to break down the bill denomination, inserting cash in the coin changer, and then finally inserting the coins to start the game; assuming all coins fall through without jamming. 

The operators or owners of these arcades must count on their local bank to have enough inventory of quarters to replenish the coin changers and repeat these steps. By today’s standards, this is a lot to ask of customers and requires additional work from the owners.

The cashless arcade system is more advantageous today because it provides a simple method to load credits to a game card by using multiple payment options including Venmo, PayPal, Credit/Debit Cards, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and of course currency.

Carrying a game card, which is the same size as a credit card, is the fastest way to start a game and enjoy the experience. Owners and employees will not have to handle coins, which have contacted many fingers and surfaces by the time they reach the arcade, any longer.

We have even added a new game play option which does not require any game card at all: Mobile Connect. It allows the player to use their cell phone to load credits, start the game and if it is a ticket redemption game, add the tickets to their phone to redeem for prizes at the prize counter. It’s as simple as “Point, Click, Play.”

From 1980 to today, I know firsthand that arcade game technology has advanced significantly; shouldn’t your payment method too?

Frank Licausi