Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
PayRange Inc. said its recent procurement of $70 million in funding will help accelerate its efforts to displace cash and convert cash-and-coin-only machines to electronic payments.
Announced Tuesday, the funding will help with PayRange’s 2020 Consumer Choice Program. That is an effort to convert cash-only machines to electronic payments. Laundry operators, for example, pay $179 for all of the equipment necessary for a single machine. In the program, according to PayRange’s Web site, these costs can be rebated potentially to no cost. The program includes a 2.49% processing rate for five years with no other fees.
“We realized that the initial upfront investment was a hurdle preventing owners from upgrading, so we developed the hardware-as-a-service (HaaS) model, allowing operators to finally bring their unnetworked machines into the digital age,” Michael Kitchen, chief revenue officer, said in a statement. “We have only begun our initial rollout of the program and are already signing up ten thousand machines a week. We are very pleased with the early results of this program and expect demand will outstrip our initial one-million device supply.”
PayRange is connected to about 250,000 vending machines and kiosks in more than 350 cities across the United States and Canada.
Portland, Ore.-based PayRange enables consumers using PayRange, when near a PayRange-equipped vending machine, to make a contactless payment using the PayRange app. A small dongle-like device is installed on a machine that connects via Bluetooth with users’ mobile phones. To make a transaction using PayRange, the consumer opens the PayRange app—available for iOS and Android smart phones—and to find the nearest machines. The consumer selects the appropriate one and makes her selection on the machine. When ready, she swipes up in the PayRange app to make the payment. She also can swipe down to cancel or use the machine’s payment-acceptance device.
