In a recently released study, USA Technologies (News - Alert) has claimed that consumers, on average, spent one-third more when making a cashless purchase than a cash purchase. The survey was based on the company’s July 2011 survey of over 10,000 traditional vending machines.

The company estimates that these positive trends result in increased returns for USAT's customers on machines where the ePort cashless payment system is installed, combined with USA Technologies' JumpStart program, which the company believes offers operators the industry's lowest total cost of ownership for cashless/telemetry solutions. According to the study, when consumers used a card versus cash on a machine equipped with an ePort, increasing the average transaction from $1.13 to $1.50, they spent 33 percent more, or $0.37 more per transaction.

Jim Turner, VP Deployment Planning Services, USA Technologies, said, "The results of our recent analysis indicate that consumers are spending more at cashless payment systems on self-service retail terminals like vending machines. We believe that this is helping to improve sales and returns for our customers in an industry battling rising product and labor costs, while also struggling to increase prices due to the limitations of a cash payment environment.”

Encompassing over 9 million cash and cashless transactions on over 10,000 traditional vending machines selling snacks, beverages, food and coffee, fitted with a USA Technologies ePort cashless payment system, these findings are based on the latest sales analysis completed for the month of July 2011, the company stated in a press release.

Recently, the company partnered with ViVOtech to demonstrate NFC mobile payment technology for vending and wireless point of sale at the NAMA Vending Expo in Chicago, April 27 through 29, 2011. Earlier, USA Technologies announced an agreement with Verizon (News - Alert) that the companies believe will accelerate the adoption of small-ticket, wireless, cashless payment services and machine-to-machine applications via USA Technologies' ePort Connect Service.