Let’s talk about card-op laundry payment

If you’re feeling stuck in a rut; tracking down laundry route operators, dealing with bags filled with dirty quarters, and paying for the maintenance of old coin slot laundry payment systems—it may be time to re-think your laundry payment setup.

Card-operated payment for laundry equipment isn’t a new solution. In fact, the concept has been around for many years. Yet many card-op systems of the past have been clunky, hard-to-manage, and unreliable.

Today, a few of the leading companies in laundry payment management have perfected their payment products for maximum usability, reliability, and ease of use. These state-of-the-art products and services provide valuable benefits to residents and property managers alike.

While there are an untold amount of reasons for switching to a card-op laundry system, if you’re a property manager that currently has all coin-op laundry machines, here are seven benefits to implementing a coinless payment system in your laundry room:

1. Save time, money and gain peace of mind with a hybrid card/coin-operated laundry payment system

Collecting the coins from each machine in your facilities is a time-consuming business. Even if you pay a laundry route to do it, that’s still money out of your pocket. And unfortunately, there are still the security risks that coin-operated machines present, as well as the uncertainty of how much is actually being collected.

Hybrid card-op laundry payment allows you to audit the amount of both coin and card sales in each of your machines. As your money boxes near capacity, you can be alerted by email and schedule the right time to have them emptied.

Plus, with an accurate system of accounting for your machines, you know that your collections are being correctly deposited. Hybrid coin-and-card systems allow you to take the worry and complexity out of dealing entirely with coins alone and save you precious time.

Ready to eliminate coins all together? No problem. The same hybrid coin-and-card equipment can be also configured to accept cards only.

Automate your collections and simplify your laundry room. Turn your two hour routine of collecting every quarter from multiple machines into a smooth five minute detail.

2. You don’t have to buy all new machines, retrofit your current machines to accept cards

Adding a digital card-op laundry payment solution does not always mean you have to replace your existing laundry equipment. In most cases, if your laundry equipment has a computerized timer or utilizes a coin drop rather than a coin slide, they are already compatible with card systems.

Payment retrofitting allows you to turn your existing laundry facilities into lean, card-operated, profit-making machines.

3. Regulate vend price incrementally

Let’s face it, the utilities needed to run a washer and dryer are not free, and gas, water, and electricity prices fluctuate daily. Having the ability to remotely change the vend price based on your utility costs will ensure that your laundry room maintains an ample profit margin.

If you make the move to card-op laundry payment for your machines, you can also stop vending your equipment in 25 cent price increments. Raising your vend prices a few pennies per cycle will have a major impact on your gross sales and often will cost justify the investment in the system in just a short time frame.

4. Access your machines remotely from any internet-enabled device

Payments are received and deposited over the internet for most laundry payment services. You can remotely view sales reports and usage statistics, as well as your systems’ statuses. These features can all be accessed from your mobile device, PC, or Mac computer in your office or at home.

5. Your residents will love it

When’s the last timed you had more than a dollar in quarters in your pocket? Now, vending machines, fast food, and even your cup of coffee, can be paid via plastic.

Many of your residents will be relieved to have the option to pay for their laundry with a debit or credit card. And if some of your residents want to pay with cash, a hybrid card-and-coin-op option with an attendant loyalty card will suit their needs.

Better yet—with the FasCard app, your residents can use their smartphones to pay for their washes and view their machine’s status in real-time from anywhere. They can see which machines are in use and when new ones will become available. And, once they get their laundry started they can ask the system to notify them when their cycles are nearly complete!

6. Eliminate refunds and start equipment remotely

Ever get call from a hostile resident who just lost their quarters in one of your washers or dryers? How much time and money does it cost you to deal with a failed $2.00 wash cycle that’s failed? With cloud-based, connected digital payment systems, you can send a remote start to any machine and resolve a tenant complaint instantly. It only takes one quarter to jam one of your machines—don’t let twenty-five cents cost you hours of productivity.

7. Don’t want to accept credit cards? Try a loyalty card

Adding a card system does not mean you have to accept credit and debit cards. Alternatively, you can distribute what what are referred to as “loyalty cards” and have your tenants add funds to them with cash or through a rent adjustment.  

This option eliminates the need to pay merchant processing fees and still gives you the flexibility to manage and control your laundry room. Loyalty cards can be reloaded via a metal kiosk located in the laundry room or in a secure area near your office.

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Managing a multi-housing building isn’t easy. Turn the burden of dealing with your laundry room into a breeze with our premium whitepaper, “Must Know Tips on Managing a Multi-Unit Laundry Room”.

Card Concepts Inc. (CCI) offers high quality card-operated laundry payment solutions through our LaundryCard system, hybrid coin-and-card operated solutions through the FasCard system, and many more options for the self-service laundry industry, including:

• Secure touch screen kiosks
• Loyalty programs
• Marketing resources
• Wireless data tracking

Give us a call today at 1 (866) 860-1660 and let our experts tailor fit the best solution for your laundry payment needs.

So you are looking to get into the laundry business. You’ve done your due diligence researching to the very best of your abilities the realities and logistics of opening a laundromat. You’ve spent hours on planetlaundry.com, on the ground finding out the going rate on local laundry franchises, maybe even visiting some successful laundromats in your area.

But once you have your basic business plan down for opening your very own laundromat, there’s just one question left: Do you stock your laundromat with coin operated laundry equipment, card operated laundry machine equipment, or both?

BenBiz.com has a great article on the pros and cons of owning a coin laundromat, an all digital card operated laundromat, and a laundromat with hybrid card-and-coin operated machines.

We at Card Concepts Inc. wanted to highlight a few excerpts from the article, Buying A Laundry: Coin Operated Laundromat Or Card Operated Laundromat? which are included below, but if you would like to read the article in full please click on the link.

“More and more we see “Coinless Laundromats“. Anyone in the business or entering the business will face the age old question; Coin or Card? Well, perhaps it’s not an age old question, as card systems haven’t been around very long, but it is a question worth considering.”

“Your management style or how you want to spend your time will also be important. A card store would be good for the person who doesn’t want to collect coins (and that can get old), wants to track all transactions, wants accurate and automatic accounting and wants to evaluate productivity of each machine.”

If you are looking for a ‘Card Only’ solution for your coinless laundromat, look no further than our LaundryCard system, focused on automating your laundromat by eliminating coins, employee management, store marketing. Learn more why coinless laundromats make good investments and if you’re a current owner who values precious free time but feel like you have less and less these days, read this article of tips on managing your laundromat remotely.

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“The hybrid systems seem to be taking over and make a lot of sense to me. Again, with this system you can do it all.  Most importantly you can take payment in any form.  If receiving payment via cash, loyalty card and credit card is good enough for Macy’s, Starbucks, Wal-Mart and the like it should be good enough for a Laundromat.”

“The hybrid store does not require that you have a reader on every machine.  This allows you to experiment with a system without paying the high price of doing an entire store.”

If you are looking for the perfect ‘hybrid’ coin-and-card operated laundry payment system then learn about our FasCard solution. With FasCard, you are able to easily modify your existing laundry machines to accept debit or credit cards and loyalty cards, while still being able to accept coins as regular coin operated laundry equipment.

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What can Card Concepts Inc. do for you? Learn more about how the revolution in smart laundry products is changing the question of laundromat owners from “Should I use card or coin-operated machines in my laundromat?“ to “Would my customers prefer hybrid card-and-coin operated machines or solely card-op laundry machines?”

Source article link: Buying A Laundry: Coin Operated Laundromat Or Card Operated Laundromat?