Analysis
CASH HANDLING
EVERYTHINGCOUNTS... The rise in importance in cash and coin handling in the gaming industry is highlighted by the focus on these products by the industry’s largest supplier of components – namely Suzo Happ. The introduction of the Talaris range (formerly known as De La Rue) and the presentation over eight pages of the new gaming catalogue underline the growth in hi-tech solutions in this industry segment.
The Talaris Ntegra is a multi-currency desktop unit that counts and sorts
COINRECYCLERSAGAINSTCOINSTARVATION Coins were king for many years in cash handling. Note validation technology did not really take off until the 1990s and so until then there was no alternative to coin-in and coin-out. Originally coins entered were paid into a cashbox within the gaming machine and coins were stored separately for pay-out. The key for gaming machines that use coins (or notes) is to have just the right amount for paying out wins, but no more. More means dead capital, while less means that machines have to be refilled and remain out of order until they are. Time is money very much so in the gaming industry and the dread of any operator is machine downtime in busy periods. As we will learn more in this report, money handling plays a key role in attaining optimal machine uptime and the money handing choice is being more and more linked with this.
Coin recyclers became the norm in the street market (pubs, bars, restaurants and naturally arcades). Dedicated coin- handling manufacturers offer excellent solutions to the market, such as Money Controls in the UK and Azkoyen in Spain. This complete coin-handling unit consists of electronic coin validator, coin sorter which sorts the coins into the corresponding pay-out hoppers. Coin overflow and coins only accepted and not paid out are sorted into the cashbox. This allows a constant flow of coins. Such gaming machines are very often legally limited in pay-in and pay-out and the coin-handling equipment has often been designed to work around these limitations. The potentially very high pay-
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banknotes. The way this is done exemplifies the technological growth. At a rate of up to 1,000 notes per minute, notes are counted with utmost precision. The integrated printer then gives documental proof of the counting process. The Nvision is the big brother of Ntegra with two sorting stacks – so that operators who have to sort really large numbers of notes can benefit from this extra capacity. Coin cointing is also covered by Talaris with the Mach series – including Mach3, Mach6, Mach9 and Mach12, depending on the number and types of denomination of coins required for sorting.
Coins can even be sorted into coin bags. Such products are standard in banks and are now becoming the norm for operators in the gaming industry.
The Talaris range from the banking world is now available for the gaming industry via Suzo Happ.
out stakes brought about requirements of paying out a very large number of coins. The coin hoppers in street markets were not adept to handle such market conditions which lead to a new product segment. These hoppers with very large bowls guaranteed the operator the chance of paying out larger wins without coin starvation occurring. Coin starvation occurs when there are no longer enough coins in the gaming machine to guarantee the highest win possibility. As casino slots often are single coin denomination, a simple two-way sorter coin suffices.
THEMOVETOTOKENDENOMINATION Casino operators were faced with having a large amount of capital bound within the gaming slots in the form of coins. A solution for many casinos, especially the larger ones, was to move to token denomination. A token was given a particular value. This was a great solution to improve cashflow but caused new challenges. Tokens have generally not been subject to the stringent alloy composition requirements specified by national banks. In other words, they have generally been simpler in their make-up, meaning they have been much easier to copy. Manipulation was the problem that had to be overcome. Entrepreneurs know that a problem is just an opportunity looking for a solution, and so a new generation of secure tokens was born.
ASLOTWITHOUTANOTEREADERIS... Not every operator will agree with this statement, but a slot without a note reader is like a fish without water. There are markets in which note readers remain illegal, such as in the Italian 6a sector, but
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