5.4 Externally managed location vending machines

Many offices have local vending machines, to sell hot, cold beverages, and pre-packaged items: the machines are operated by an external operating company, which handles machine filling and product selection.

These companies will manage different sets of locations, and have a great variety of product to handle.

Managing a location means also to get information about the device status and operational conditions. The standard audit used today is very limited and mainly provides accounting information. A larger set of data, and a standardized way to get these data make managing widely different device simpler.

Local payment devices are basic elements for these operations: in the past days cash was the only option.

Today cash is important, but a large variety of different other payment types are available. Anything which is not cash is "cashless" but under this definition there is a large variety of different technologies:

standard credit cards,

closed system payment cards,

hotel may require integration in the general customer accounting,

employer can require integration in company payroll,

loyalty cards,

points, and many other.