eSuds cleans up with vending machine e-payment system
Students at Cedarville College will soon be able to log on to their computers to check for an available washing machine in a live picture of their dorm’s laundry room, where they will go to swipe a payment card to activate both a washing machine and a complex flow of information to the college accounting department, the machine’s operator and even the student’s dorm room.
So instead of waiting in the laundry room while the washing machine does its job, the student will be able to return to a dorm room and wait for an e-mail alert that the wash cycle has ended. Meanwhile, the card swipe mechanism will have already instantly debited the college cash account and sent diagnostic information about the washing machine the student activated to the company that maintains the machines, so the operator will know, for instance, if that particular machine needs a refill of its built-in soap dispenser or is due for maintenance.
For the Cedarville, OH-based college, which prides itself on being ahead of the curve in technology, its new “eSuds.net” laundry system suits its image. “It fits into our philosophy of leveraging technology for the benefit of students,” a spokesman says.
For the technology vendors behind eSuds.net, USA Technologies Inc. and IBM Corp., the Internet technology-based system represents a broad new market for vending machines activated by e-payment mechanisms. IBM Global Services, which is working with USA Technologies to introduce eSuds.net in college campuses throughout the Midwest and Canada, says it expects to roll out 9,000 e-payment-activated machines over the next several months.
Although in some cases these systems could run over private networks, IBM says it expects most to run over the public Internet, because of its low cost, broad availability and improvements in transaction security. Vending machine operators stand to benefit from a sharp decline in vandalism, since e-payment-activated machines contain no cash, and from lower operating costs, because machines will require less on-site maintenance, the company says.
IBM and USA Technologies are also working on projects that will use similar technology to run machines that vend drinks at the Gaylord Opryland resort in Memphis and machines that dispense Kodak disposable cameras at DisneyWorld and in hospital maternity wards.
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