I keep seeing discussion about credit card readers…. Problem is it is hard enough to make money as an operator, especially if there is a location split where the operator has to give a portion of coin drop to the location. Now, couple that with the fact that a credit card service wants to charge a monthly fee and a transaction fee too, there is less money money for the operator. Now what about chargebacks? Someone claims their card was stolen, games ripped them off or anything else along those lines. Now the operator is out of more money in addition to the audits will be off thereby operator missing money and giving split to a location that was never there.

I operated pins for a long time in several locations, big and small. Card readers are a major expense and so is the service that is connected with them. I also bought dollar bill acceptors for the majority of my pins, prices ranged from $20-$400 each. The $20 DBAs weee used/broken and needed repair or updates (more time and money). The $400 DBAs were required for the newer pins like JJP machine because they went to a 12v system. There were work around a to use a higher voltage DBA, but that was more time and money. The older pins required a new coin door because the old coin doors wouldn’t fit the majority of DBAs out there unless you wanted to cut and modify the original door. By the time I bought a NIB pin, the DBA, any mods or protective devices, there was a period of time that I wasn’t making money until those add on’s had been paid for through earnings. In addition, money wasn’t made until the deprecated value of the pin had been earned (back then, pins lost value especially as routed games).

It is very hard to earn money as a legit and quality focused operator. It’s easy to assume a credit card reader is not that expensive and is going to make more money, that’s just not case. Meanwhile, cost per play remains pretty much unchanged and cost of equipment keeps going up. More people aren’t playing location pinball on a scale big enough to make up the increased cost of operating.

The last thing an operator wants is a manufacture getting involved with their earnings or knowledge of them. That is a slippery slope, on one hand a manufacture could see just how hard it is for an operator to make money. On the other hand, a manufacture could believe an operator is making an “excessive” amount of money and can afford to give up earnings by increasing cost of services or equipment for an operator.