Hello All!

[mercunium]

Hi all,

I'm new here and just thought I would introduce myself and my slightly unusual venture into vending.

I am a paramedic in England and my ambulance station had some staff welfare funds available last year. One of the purchases we made was a secondhand refrigerated snack and can vending machine (Samba Necta). I am purchasing ambient goods to sell at a very small mark-up with all the profits going back into the staff welfare fund to buy nice things for the staff. The machine has been running for 10 months now and has been very well received by staff and has been successful. However, it only has a coin mechanism in at the moment and most people want to pay by card due to not carrying change around, which is understandable. The problem with this is the relatively low sale rate of the machine (around £150/month) and the cost of the service charge for any reader given the low mark-up on the products inside.

To get around the cost implications of merchant services, I have purchased a RS232 to MDB expansion board (Pi Hat) for a Raspberry Pi. My plan is to have a web platform where users top-up an account by PayPal - and most importantly cover the PayPal fees themselves when topping up. Then when users want to use their account to purchase from the machine, they log in on their smartphone and send their credit to the machine. Once the transaction is complete, the amount spent is deducted from their account.

I have a bit of a programming background, and have had a crash course in MDB and have nearly everything set up and ready to go. I've posted in another forum about the question I have, but in the meantime, it's great to read the experiences of others!

Mark 🙂