Taiwan startup Yallvend is ready to promote its newly developed vending upgrade kits (VUK) designed to make vending machines smart and able to perform mobile payment functions, according to company CEO CY Huang.
Huang said that traditional vending machines usually cannot work well for about one tenth of the time, due to mechanical failure, stock running out, or no sufficient cash available to make change. This, coupled with poor inventory and replenishment management amid the absence of network connections, and fraudulent coin insertion by consumers, makes it necessary for automatic vending machines to go smart.
Huang indicated that though Yallvend's VUK module comprises only three devices - modem, antenna and QR code - it can help upgrade existing vending machines to IoT level and address the abovementioned problems.
Yallvend, founded in January 2019, also offers backend information management system to help operators harness the latest operation conditions of their vending machines and boost overall operating efficiency. The system can issue warnings twice, one at 50% of inventory left for each product item on sales and the other at 25%, to allow operators to better time their replenishment and reduce related cost, according to Huang.
Through the QR Code on each vending machine, Huang continued, consumers can easily use mobile payment platforms to shop at vending machines.
Huang commented that connecting vending machines is a simple technology, but it is a great challenge for such machines to handle mobile payment. In this regard, he stressed that Yallvend has developed a friendly common solution to equip coin-operated washing machines and automatic car washing machines with mobile payment capability.
Besides the Taiwan market, Huang revealed, Yallvend has zeroed in on Southeast Asia and Japan as next target markets for its UVK solutions.