One of the two main questions I have been getting asked throughout my career in laundry equipment sales is: what is the best card reader to put on your machines.
I’m happy to give my opinion on the different systems that I have had experience with either at my own stores or through ones that I managed. I also thought though since the company I work for, does not represent one particular brand that I can be as independent as possible in my opinions.
Then I had a fun idea, why not let you my fellow laundromat owners provide your thoughts on what you think the best system is. I used to be a journalist so I’ve decided to interview owners about their experiences with the different card systems out there.
I have emailed a few owners with questions on the cashless system they are using and I'll publish them here as I receive them. Since the owners are writing their own responses, I'm not editing them except to correct for spelling or delete swear words. I'm giving the owners the option of using their real names and locations or being anonymous.
Below is the first of these interviews:
The first person I’m talking to is a gentleman by the name of Mike F. who has a 1,500sq/ft store and he has ESD card readers.
So what made you decide to go with a non-cash payment system?
I started looking into this as soon as Wisconsin said, it would be legal to do on Laundry machines. I had seen that people were spending more and more with their credit cards and not carrying cash in other stores and I wanted to be at the forefront of this movement.
Were you having a problem keeping quarters in your store?
No. My store is generally been quarter positive. I’ve only had to buy quarters for my store once in the 15 years that I’ve owned it. I’ve been fortunate that way.
What were your concerns about cashless systems in general?
-How long before I would get my money back
-Cost
-Would my customers like it and use it
What system did you go with and why ?
At the time that I started looking at systems in 2016, there were generally only three. There was ESD, SpyderWash, and FasCard. When I started looking at the prices for all of them, they were all roughly $500 per machine. At the time two of the companies had a minimum amount that you needed to buy in order for them to sell to you. One of them it was a minimum of $10,000 and the other it was a minimum of a certain number of machines, I think 20 machines. My store is not that big and my pockets are not that deep so I did not want to commit a whole ton of money on something that I wasn’t sure would work. At the time paying by phone was very new and the technology of apps wasn't popular yet.
I figured the technology would keep changing so I decided to go with the most simple method as I figured it would be a while before people stopped using physical credit cards and everyone knows how to swipe a card.
What did you like best about the ESD card readers?
The ESD card reader is a simple swipe device. Very simple. Everybody knows how to swipe a credit card. That’s what turned me onto that particular product. I know since then they have added other things, however I have just stayed with the card swipes because it’s what my customers understand and I have the least amount of problems with.
What was the cost for the card readers?
About $500 each and that was just the readers, it was a little bit more for Install at the time. There are the percentages taken off for the transactions which is between 3.5%-5% depending on what kind of card they have. There is also a monthly fee for maintaining the stats website.
How long did it take for you to get a return on your investment?
I spent about $10,000 total on the equipment and install. When I look back as much as I promoted it, if I were to just take the amount of revenue that I earned from those credit card readers only it would’ve taken me 3 1/2 years to pay it all back.
What I noticed was that about 10% of my customers gravitated to it right away. They appreciated not having to use a lot of quarters. I think in my store, because I do not have a lot of big machines, or at least didn’t at that time, that a lot of people did not find it trouble to carry around a dollar or two of quarters. Where I found it most helpful was in two situations:
-those people that had garbage bags full of clothes they liked having the card system, because they did not have to carry a bunch of quarters,
-and the people that maybe did not quite figure out how many loads they had, and discovered that they ran short of change they could use the card reader to still start machines. Some people decided that because we had a card reader, they would bring more than just their ordinary amount of clothes they might bring a comforter or blanket, and they knew they could use the credit card to start the machine.
Were there any advantages of this system over the other others at the time that you installed it?
Our swipe is very simple. There were smart phones around, but they were not as prevalent as they are today. You never knew what was going to be the exact standard for things like iPay or Google pay at that time so I went with the easiest thing for people to understand. Also I figured it would have the least amount of maintenance.
Were there any other extras that came along with the readers?
The website that had all the data was very interesting to keep track of the time and the amount spent. I looked at it a lot at first and then didn’t really look at it for months afterwards. Ironically, I ran a five year comparison on the data just recently and all of the spending habits all still matched up in terms of when people are using credit cards at my store. It has not changed in five years. I thought that was very interesting.
Were there any problems with the readers?
They generally worked just fine however, there were two parts that you really needed to make sure you kept up on.
-The first was making sure that the antenna that broadcast the signal from the machine to your Wi-Fi was always in a clear area. Sometimes if workers went behind the machine to do maintenance, they might takeoff a back panel or move something and they would forget about that antenna and either not put it back where it needed to go or the leads would come out of the machine. That made the credit card swipe not work.
-The second and most important bid of maintenance was keeping up with the software updates that ESD would send.
When you ordered your card readers, you had the choice of getting a router that ESD sold you and that would connect to your card devices or you could hook it up to your own internet system. Since my internet system is a closed loop that is not open to customers I decided to just use that. What they did not tell me was that if you went with the ESD router you would automatically get all the security updates sent to you on the router and taking care of you didn’t have to do anything. If you used your own internet router, they would mail you the security updates. It was a series of credit card looking cards that you would have to open up the washer or dryer and physically insert into the computer board inside the machine. It would then give you certain readings, and that would update the software. You had to do that manually for each washer and dryer and that took a lot of time to do. If you missed an update, your credit card devices were still secure, however eventually you ran into the problem where the swipe devices would not talk to the servers that ESD had because they were too far out of date. At that point there was nothing that you can do except for by new card readers. Now that they have gone to the app kiosk I’m not sure if it still works that way, but a few years ago that’s the way it was.
Are they easy to install?
For people that understand electronics and wiring they probably are. I don’t know how to do any of that stuff so I did not do it. I know that they hook into a small computer board that is placed inside the machine, and that is connected to power as well as to the coin drop and to the control board. I would not want to do it myself just in case I screw something up but I’m sure it’s a lot easier now and they have better directions than back then.
Have you ever considered adding ESD‘s other products like a kiosk or their mobile payment app?
I have looked at all of those. However, I’ve decided that I’m going to stick with something simple that everyone understands and still today not everyone has a smart phone or likes having a ton of apps on their phone so I’m staying with just a credit card readers for now.
Thank you for the interview!
Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy
