KioskForce vending machines support a wide range of payment methods, both as MDB peripherals and as native cashless payments. This page sets out which is which, what each one does and does not do, and the question buyers most often ask too late: whether the sales report will tell you what was sold when the customer paid by card.
The short answer on card sales data
The complaint turns up repeatedly from operators of cheap imported machines, and it is usually phrased almost identically: the machine works without any major issue, the only problem is I can’t see which product was sold when it was paid with card.
That happens when a machine has no sales record of its own and leans on the payment terminal for its reporting. The terminal knows an amount was authorised. It does not know, and has no reason to know, that the amount was a pair of size-9 gloves from tray 3.
On a KioskForce machine, item-level reporting comes from the machine’s own telemetry, not from the payment terminal. The machine composes the order — items, quantities, machine, location, time, order state, receipt ID — and sends that record to the cloud dashboard itself. It does this identically whether the customer paid with coins, tapped a card on a Nayax terminal, scanned an Alipay QR code, or badged in against a company allowance. The payment device settles the money. The machine reports the sale.
This is the single most useful question to put to any supplier you are comparing, and it should be asked in these words: does the sales report show the product on a card transaction, or only the amount? It appears again in our manufacturer vetting checklist for the same reason.
Payment compatibility matrix
Two columns in this table do most of the work. Item detail in the machine’s order record is uniformly yes, because it does not depend on the payment device. Offline behaviour is where the real differences sit, and most of it is your processor’s behaviour rather than ours.
| Payment method | Connection | Contactless card | Mobile wallet | Item detail in the machine’s order record | Behaviour with no network | Money reporting lives in |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coin mech / coin acceptor | MDB peripheral | — | — | Yes | Fully operational; orders sync when the link returns | The cash box; sales in the dashboard |
| Note acceptor | MDB peripheral | — | — | Yes | Fully operational; orders sync when the link returns | The cash box; sales in the dashboard |
| Vending on Track VendCoin | MDB cashless | Tap and go | Via the terminal | Yes | Authorisation follows the terminal’s own connectivity | VendCoin reporting |
| Nayax | MDB cashless | Yes | Via the terminal | Yes | Authorisation follows the terminal’s own connectivity | Your Nayax portal |
| Cantaloupe | MDB cashless | Yes | Via the terminal | Yes | Authorisation follows the terminal’s own connectivity | Your Cantaloupe portal |
| Other MDB cashless terminal | MDB cashless | Terminal-dependent | Terminal-dependent | Yes | Authorisation follows the terminal’s own connectivity | Your processor’s portal |
| WeChat Pay / Alipay | Native — on-screen QR, no reader | — (QR instead) | Yes, by QR | Yes | Requires the wallet provider to be reachable | The merchant account behind the wallet |
| Prepaid / account (RFID badge or PIN) | Native | — | — | Yes, attributed to the named worker | Local fallback is a supported deployment mode; scoped with the integration | The dashboard — this is issue, not retail sale |
| Free vend | Native | — | — | Yes, attributed to the named worker | Fully operational; orders sync when the link returns | No money moves; the record is the point |
| SMS code release | Native | — | — | Yes | Requires the validation service to be reachable | Depends on the validating system |
Notes on reading the table:
- “Terminal-dependent” is not evasion. Which card schemes and wallets a terminal accepts is set by that terminal and the processor behind it. We can tell you the device will work on the machine; only your processor can tell you which cards it will take in your market.
- “Authorisation follows the terminal’s own connectivity” means exactly what it says. Approving a card is the terminal’s job over the terminal’s own connection. Ask your processor what its device does when that connection drops — some hold and forward, some decline. It is their answer to give, not ours.
- Free vend is a payment method. It sounds like the absence of one. On an employer-supplied PPE or consumables deployment it is the normal mode, and the control moved from price to entitlement.
How the two connection types differ
MDB peripherals and MDB cashless devices
MDB is the vending industry’s standard interface between a machine controller and payment devices. Anything that presents a standard MDB interface can, in principle, be wired into the machine: coin mechs, coin acceptors and note acceptors on the cash side; card and wallet terminals on the cashless side. KioskForce vending machines have extensive support for the major MDB cashless devices, including:
- Vending on Track VendCoin
- Nayax
- Cantaloupe
Nayax deserves a specific note. Beyond the standard MDB cashless interface, KioskForce holds a Nayax Cashless Payment Solution Integration Certification for the Equipment Rental machine type, certified for Marshall Multi-Session Payment and valid to 31 March 2028. Marshall runs over RS232 rather than MDB and splits a transaction into authorisation and later settlement — the customer’s card is authorised when they take the item and settled when they bring it back, up to 71 hours later. That is what makes unattended hire enforceable, and it is set out with the certificate on automated equipment hire.
VendCoin is built by Vending on Track, KioskForce’s Australian parent company, which handles payment systems and software for the group. It is offered where it suits the deployment and is an option, not a condition of purchase — keeping an existing processor relationship is a perfectly good reason to specify a third-party terminal instead. VendCoin’s origin is a customer project: an operator who wanted to stay in touch with customers and drive machine sales directly, which is why it carries loyalty and campaign features alongside tap-and-go and QR payment. See the VendCoin case study.
One consequence of fitting a third-party terminal is worth planning for: the payment device is usually the single item in the machine that is not ours, so its warranty, firmware and replacement parts come from its vendor rather than from us. That distinction is set out in spare parts and after-sales support.
Native payment methods
These are handled by the machine’s own screen and software, with no additional payment hardware:
- On-screen QR code — the screen generates a QR code for the transaction and the customer scans it with WeChat Pay, Alipay or another QR wallet. The customer’s phone does the work a reader would otherwise do.
- Prepaid and account-based issue — the worker authenticates with an RFID badge or a PIN, the machine checks entitlement or quota, releases the item and records it against their name. This is the standard model on industrial sites and is what makes PPE quota control and per-cost-centre reporting possible.
- Free vend — the item carries no charge; the control is the entitlement rather than the price.
- SMS code release — a code issued by an external system is entered at the machine to release an item, used where an outside service decides eligibility.
Because these are native, the enable/disable decision is a software setting rather than a hardware change, and methods can be turned on or off per machine from the cloud dashboard after deployment.
Where the reporting lives
Buyers frequently assume one system holds everything. Two do, and they answer different questions.
| Question | Answered by | Detail available |
|---|---|---|
| What was sold, from which machine, when, to whom? | The KioskForce cloud dashboard | Items, quantities, machine, location, time, order state, receipt ID; queried by date range and exported as CSV or Excel |
| Was the money authorised, settled and what did it cost? | Your payment processor’s portal | Authorisations, settlement, fees, chargebacks — per your processor’s own reporting |
The machine’s order record carries one of five states, which is the vocabulary to use when reconciling the two systems:
- Pending Payment — the order was placed but payment has not been inserted.
- Succeeded — ordered and paid successfully.
- Canceled — the customer cancelled before payment.
- Refunded — the product failed to dispense after payment, so the money was returned automatically.
- Expired — payment was not inserted within the timeout, so the unpaid order was marked expired.
Every confirmed payment generates a unique receipt ID linking the transaction record to the payment details, which is the field to reconcile on and the field to quote when a post-sale query comes up. The Refunded state is the one to check when a customer says they were charged for nothing — the mechanics of why a vend fails and what the machine does about it are covered on dispense reliability. Full operating detail on running reports is in the vending machine user manual.
Will my processor work with your machine?
This question deserves a specific answer rather than a general assurance, so the honest process is:
Send us three things.
- The make and model of the terminal you intend to use.
- The MDB documentation its vendor publishes for it.
- The country the machine will operate in.
Three things get checked, and compatibility is confirmed on the quotation.
| Check | What decides it |
|---|---|
| Interface | Whether the device presents a standard MDB cashless interface, and which MDB revision it implements |
| Physical fit and power | Whether the device fits the cabinet position and its power requirement is met inside the machine |
| Acquiring | Whether the processor behind the terminal is licensed to acquire transactions in your market |
The third check is the one buyers most often skip, and it is the one that bites. A terminal can be electrically perfect and still be useless because its processor does not operate in the destination country. Confirm it with the processor before the machine is built, not after it lands.
If you have not yet chosen a processor, the useful sequence is the reverse: decide which payment methods your users actually reach for in that market, ask which processors offer them, and specify the terminal last.
Choosing the mix for a site
| Site type | Typical mix | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Industrial plant, warehouse, mine site | Prepaid/account or free vend, badge authentication | The machine issues employer-supplied stock; the record matters more than the payment. See industrial vending |
| Public-access retail | MDB cashless terminal plus optional cash | The buyer is a member of the public with a card or phone, not an account |
| Asia-Pacific and Middle East public sites | Native QR alongside a card terminal | QR is the primary method in several of these markets, not a fallback |
| Mixed workforce site | Account for company-issued items, card or QR for personal purchases | One machine, two entitlement models |
Payment method availability can be changed per machine from the dashboard afterwards, so the decision is not irreversible — but the hardware decision is, because fitting an MDB cashless terminal later means opening a machine that is already on site. Specify the terminal position at quotation even if you plan to start without one.
Native Payment Methods
Indonesia (ID)
Australia (AU)
China (CN)
United Kingdom (UK)
Related reading
- How to vet a vending machine manufacturer — including the card-data question to put to every supplier.
- Dispense reliability and stockout prevention — what happens when a paid-for vend fails.
- Spare parts and after-sales support — why the payment terminal sits on a different parts path.
- PPE cost control — quota-based issue, where entitlement replaces price.
- Age-verified vending — code release, account-based entitlement and external validation applied to age-restricted products.
- Smart vending machines — the telemetry stack the order record runs on.
- Cashless vending machine payment methods — adoption data and the commercial case for going cashless.
- WeChat and Alipay vending mini-apps — a customer project built on native QR payment.
