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Thoughts on USAT acquiring Cantelope?


Jchunn28

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Haven't heard that.  Who is acquiring who?  I could see it go either way.  If USAT owns it then it could be to get Cantaloupes technology (and hopefully their customer service.)  If Cantaloupe owns it then they are just grabbing market share but it could really help USAT customers.

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I was saddened, but not surprised. $65 million cash, plus $20 million in stock is huge. As I understand it, USAT wanted the international channels that Cantaloupe had developed. Also, Cantaloupe did not have an internal back office to process card transactions. That's what USAT lives for. It was good for both stock holders.

The problem we operators will have is integration of the 2 systems. I still haven't fully recovered from the Vend Screen acquisition. Luckily, I only have 30 of those heaps. 

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Customer service and support from Cantaloupe won't translate over to USAT with the purchase. The devices, protocols, and technology are completely different. Plus, USAT has hundreds of thousands of connections more than Cantaloupe that they have to support. It is not as simple as having a good support team and moving them over. If anything, it likely means that Cantaloupe's customer service will get worse.

Mergers and acquisitions are always messy. In their press release, they stated that they won't even complete the merger until 2018, and I expect it to take much longer to work out all the kinks.

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Regardless of how this merger pans out, I feel like it's only a matter of time before credit card technology and processing gets to the level of bill acceptance in the sense that any card reader will be compatible with any card, any processor, and any newer MDB machine... but I think by the time it gets to that point, NFC technology will be the preferred method.  

A fellow told me.. 7 years ago.. that all machines would be "cashless only" in 5-10 years and they would all come with cashless technology and cash acceptance would be an optional thing you would have to pay extra for.  Here we are, 7 years later, and machines aren't quite there yet, but devices like payrange create a very interesting twist to things.  I'm just waiting for the day where card readers cost no more than say.. $150 brand new with NFC technology on all new devices (I think all of the new ones take NFC now anyway).

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