For today’s family entertainment centre operator, a cashless system can connect gameplay, pricing, reporting, guest engagement, and team operations. It can show you what is happening across your venue while there is still time to act.
During the IAAPA webinar Cashless 3.0: Future-proofing FECs in Europe and the UK, Rob McMenamin, General Manager of EMEA at Embed, spoke with James Miller, Founder and Managing Director of Fun Station UK, and Trevor Sutton, Director of the Complete Solutions business division at Bandai Namco Amusement Europe.
Here are some key takeaways FEC operators can apply to their business from the webinar:
For many UK operators, moving away from coins is not as simple as changing a payment method.
Generations of guests grew up putting coins into arcade games and coin pushers, particularly at traditional seaside venues. Asking them to load credit onto a game card introduced a new journey that operators had to explain.
As James Miller put it:
“The biggest variable wasn’t the tech. It was the customer’s approach to something they’d never experienced.”
A system can be technologically capable and still cause frustration if the guest does not understand what to do next. Your cashless journey needs to answer practical questions:
The right cashless setup should make it easier for guests to start and continue playing. Self-service kiosks, contactless payments, RFID game cards, and mobile wallets can all support that journey, but only when their purpose is clear.
There is also no single rollout model for every venue.
A holiday park with a known, pre-booked audience can introduce the system before guests arrive, perhaps through advance communications or preloaded offers. A seaside arcade serving spontaneous day visitors may need a different approach. Similar equipment, but the environment and guest expectations are not.
In a traditional coin-op arcade, important information often arrives way after your team collects and reconciles coins, prepares reports, and then reviews what happened. By the time you identify an underperforming game or an unsuccessful offer, the opportunity to respond may have passed.
Cashless systems can give you real-time information about game revenue, sales by hour, spend per head, game card sales, offer performance, peak trading periods, and individual game performance.
“The data makes you more proactive than reactive,” said James Miller. “You need to know what’s working and what’s not.” For Trevor Sutton, the difference is significant: “With data that you can get in real time, it’s an absolute game-changer. It’s just how you use it that’s most important.”
The goal is not to open every report available. More data does not automatically lead to better decisions. Instead, begin with the questions that matter to your venue:
This visibility becomes more important as labour, energy, equipment, and maintenance costs rise. Operators need to know where revenue is being generated and where margins may be slipping.
Cashless pricing also removes the physical limitations of coin denominations. Rather than adjusting every machine individually, you can make considered pricing changes centrally, test an offer, and measure the results. It gives flexibility to respond when your operating environment shows that a change is needed.
A cashless system may reduce coin collection, machine jams, ticket refills, and manual reporting. That does not make your team less important. It gives them opportunities to spend more time with guests.
Team members use this time to support sales, explain offers, resolve issues, and deliver the personal experience that brings people back.
Trevor Sutton cautioned against treating labour efficiency as a simple reduction: “What you need to look at is retraining the team and going for that sales focus, that front-of-house focus.”
Staff need to understand why the venue is adopting the cashless system, and how exactly it improves the guest experience. Only cover the reports and controls relevant to their roles and how their responsibilities will change.
As Rob McMenamin explained, even the best equipment can fall short if the people on the floor have not been shown why it matters or how to use it well.
Operators with arcades, attractions, restaurants, bars, and party rooms often want one point-of-sale system to manage the entire venue. In practice, forcing one platform to serve every operational need can lead to compromises.
A restaurant may need a specialist hospitality POS built around table service, kitchen workflows, and open tabs. An arcade needs a platform designed for gameplay, reloads, redemption, pricing, and machine-level reporting. Before choosing a platform, consider the following:
The aim is not one system for the sake of simplicity. It is one useful view of your business, supported by systems that work for the teams using them.
No operator can know exactly what guests, payment methods, regulations, or operational tools will look like several years from now. A more practical goal is choosing today’s technology and partners that can evolve—those that have a track record of innovating. Look beyond the feature list presented during a sales demonstration, with some of these questions:
AI gives operators another reason to get these foundations right. It may help analyse data, organise routine work, and identify patterns, but it cannot repair fragmented systems or unreliable information.
As Rob McMenamin observed: “AI does not fix bad foundations. It exposes them faster.” So before asking what AI can do for your venue, make sure your operational data is accurate, accessible, and organised.
For a broader look at the technology, hardware, guest journey, and business case, explore Embed’s guide to cashless arcade systems for FEC operations.
The strongest cashless strategy is the one that makes your venue easier to visit, operate, and understand for both internal teams and guests. While technology can connect systems and experiences, your people are still the ones who turn that infrastructure into a great day out.