There's a bit of confusion about "cashless vending" right now, so let me clear it up — because going fully cashless and taking cashless payments are two different decisions, and most offices only need one of them.

You don't have to go fully cashless

Fully cashless machines are a real trend, and it's growing — the new AI vending machines coming onto the market are all cashless by design. That's where part of the industry is heading. But for a standard vending machine in a standard office, you do not have to rip out the coin and bill acceptors and go card-only. Keeping cash as an option is perfectly fine.

What you do have to do: add card readers

Here's the part that isn't optional. If you want the machine to actually make money, it needs a credit and debit card reader — tap included — at minimum. This isn't a nice-to-have anymore.

The reason is simple, and it's straight from my own machines: about two-thirds of the revenue flows through the card readers, not the coin mechanism and the bill validators. Most people walking up to a machine today aren't carrying change, and a lot of them aren't carrying cash at all. A cash-only machine isn't saving you anything — it's quietly turning away the majority of its sales. I covered this briefly in what makes a workplace machine work; this is the part worth repeating.

The practical version

So the answer for most offices isn't "cash or cashless" — it's "cash and cards." Keep the bill and coin acceptors if you like them, but make sure tap-and-card is there, because that's where two of every three dollars actually come from. The fully cashless AI machines are their own emerging category; you can keep an eye on them, but you don't need to wait for them to fix the thing that's costing you sales today.

Every machine we place is set up to take tap and card, because we've seen what cash-only leaves behind. We're family-owned and Vaughan-based and we run vending across the GTA. Sam answers the phone.