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Sticking Around
Despite evolving cashless technology, coins remain the bane of slot floors nearly everywhere.

By Marian Green

Ticket-in, ticket out. Debit cards. Smart cards. Even a key-fob-like device that allows customers to store value for use throughout the casino. 

All technological improvements designed to reduce operational headaches and enhance customer service on the slot floor. But there are thousands and thousands of machines still out there that take only bills and coins. And for the foreseeable future that situation is likely to continue because of the large expense in changing over a slot floor to a new system.

In the meantime, casino slot executives continue to be concerned with how to make hopper fills and jackpot hand pays more efficient and continually improve customer service. Those concerns have been heightened with the advent of multiline, multicoin games.

Money Controls spokesman Rudy Stevenson said coin hoppers need to reliably handle the high payouts associated with current games. Hoppers must have increased bowl capacity, be easy to maintain and have anti-coinjamming measures, such as the patented Twister device on Money Controls' Gamesman Paytrak that helps prevent problems associated with coin jams in the hopper's escalator section.

"We certainly saw an explosion in the requirements of coin processing because those machines certainly do churn through a lot of coins," said Richard Currie, vice president of marketing and sales for Coin Mechanisms.

But despite the associated operational headaches, Currie said he believes coins will remain part of the gaming experience for some time to come. "There are are things that coins add to the equation that are important to players - it's part of the winning experience," he said.

Gregg Solomon, senior vice president, operations,
Mandalay Resort Group, said he doesn't believe cashless technologies will make dramatic inroads immediately: "Five years from now, it's going to be a combination of both - money is still going to be a part of this, and EFT is going to be a part of this."
Currie believes that technologies such as EZ Pay that still allow the use of coin will be the wave of the future. "I don't see any big rush to go in coinless at all, and I see even less risk of people going cashless, but what I do see is a movement to go to a cash equivalent system that accepts coins and banknotes."

Today, Mandalay and other casino operators are employing a variety of ways to cope with the inefficiencies of hand pays and hopper fills. 

"The handling of coin has been historically one of the hardest dynamics of the casino, because it's still so labor intensive," said Frank Neborsky, vice president of slot operations, Mohegan Sun, in Uncasville, Conn. 

His casino envisions phasing in cashless technology, having recently installed Advanced Casino Systems Corp.'s system. "We feel it's the most convenient step for the players," Neborsky said.

Meanwhile, his property works hard to make its coin handling operations more efficient for both the casino and customers.
"The more of the [casino] cage functions we can bring out to the floor close to the event that needs to be handled, the better service becomes," Neborsky said.
Solomon is exploring tokenization for his properties, as well as products aimed at improving both coin and bill drops. 

"Reducing machine downtime is the name of the game," Solomon said. "We're trying to get to the point with systems manufacturers where hand pays are generated out of cash dispensing devices such as Perconta and TDN, eliminating backlogs at the cages and change booths."

Solomon also cited Vending Data Corp's products, which can streamline hopper fills and hard counts. Its products include the mobile coin vault and command center and SecureDrop Coin Transfer Option, which transports bulk coin from the coin vault to automatic wrappers. Glenview Systems and Ardent Gaming are among the other companies offering devices that aid in preemptory fills.

Solomon said Mandalay's MotorCity Casino is the test site for JCM American's Intelligent Cash Box, which he views as very promising and secure. "Right now, the way we handle the bill validator drops is just a very time-consuming labor intensive system that is highly prone to error," he said.

JCM offers a solution to support casinos' soft drop operations. The Intelligent Cash Box uses a memory module and sensor enhancement in the WBA-12/13 to identify the specific slot machine the box belongs to. The information stored in the memory module is downloaded using a docking station that
obtains the asset/house number from which the Intelligent Cash Box was installed, which eliminates key entry errors that may occur during soft count reconciliation.

Solomon also said biometrics will start to play a greater role on the slot floor witnessing transactions and verifying payments. 
Neborsky's floor has incorporated secondary fills in slot machine bases, placed cabinets on the floor to hold extra hopper fills, and made significant use of jackpot kiosk technology and currency change machines.

Relief valve
The self-service machines have been of assistance to both casino customers and slot personnel, Neborsky said.
"It's a convenience for our players. It's been part of the program to help the guests service themselves," he said of the machines that dispense change or change large bills into smaller ones. "If they wish to use them, it creates a relief valve for the employees," especially during particularly busy periods.

And slot change employees can also use the machines during busy periods to replenish their supply of smaller bills. "It creates options," Neborsky said.

Those options are becoming increasingly important, said Michael Wandell, of Nevada MPI, a distributor of the Perconta F. Zimmermann self-redemption machines, "We're becoming a self-service society. There are a lot of people who would prefer to go to a machine than deal with a person."

The machines, first introduced in the United States at Sunset Station in Henderson, Nev., have proved especially important on busy weekends. "If there's a big line at the cage or booth, a change person can come over and say, 'You can just redeem the coins over here,' and the line goes away."

But Perconta is hedging its bets - in August it introduced its first voucher machine that converts tickets into cash, at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. The machine, which interfaces with IGT's EZ Pay ticket-in, ticket-out games, doesn't accept coins, but it can dispense coins, so a redeemed ticket doesn't have to be rounded up or down.

"As that [coinless/cashless] market grows, we hope to play a major part," Wandell said. "The machines won't become obsolete as technologies mature. We can adapt to whatever medium they want to bring us."

Coin hopper manufacturer Asahi Seiko is paying especially close attention to developments in coinless-cashless technology.
Asahi Seiko gaming representative Vince Dempsey said he believes the jury is still out on cashless and coinless technologies - particularly on whether customers of tourist-oriented properties will embrace the machines. And, he said, it's likely that coin hoppers will continue to play a part even as the new alternative payment technologies begin to take hold.

At a gaming show this month, Asahi Seiko will demonstrate "that a printer and a hopper can be used side by side and give the customer the best of both worlds," Dempsey said.

Products such as IGT's EZ Pay allow the operator to pay out a certain amount of coin into a hopper while printing higher amounts on tickets, he noted. But not all game manufacturers have developed the software to do that yet.

Asahi Seiko also believes that more compact hoppers may soon find homes in gaming machines, particularly if casinos choose to pursue voucher technologies. If a machine had a hopper and a printer, the hopper could give the odd change after the larger winnings were dispensed on a printed ticket.

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