Safety Fast
Chris Sanson talks to Robert Dunn, VP International Sales, GPT (Europe) Limited
Global Payment Technologies is a well established company however could we possibly commence the interview with the history of the company? GPT goes back 22 years when we started business with a light pen scanner. This was soon followed by a US Dollar bill scanner, and very early on, we included a lockable steel cash-box in our design. The North American bill reader market was already pretty large by then, and so GPT started looking elsewhere for opportunities. The US dollar bills have always been manufactured with magnetic inks, so bill readers in those days only did a simple magnetic scan. Across the border in Canada, where the banknotes were made differently (like the rest of the world) it was necessary to do an optical read of the images on the banknotes. GPT’s Generation 1 product (the IVO) was one of the first to add this feature. The IVO was an amazingly simple and robust bill reader, and it opened up the global market to GPT. There are still IVO units in operation today in many countries around the world.
High levels of Security and accountability are key standards of a modern casino what security features are in your products? Both of these features have been foremost in our designs since day one. We have lead the way with multi-coloured optics since our Generation 1 product twenty years ago. Our patented optics and our software enable us to provide the highest level of security in all of our validators. All of our products have used our proprietary serial protocol for over a decade. This powerful protocol provides many extra features such as the ability to interrogate the validator remotely, for accounting and statistical reporting. We introduced the intelligent cash box in our Generation 2 product line in 1994 which enabled the operator to crosscheck the contents of the cash drop with the on-line system account, before the cash box was opened in the count room. We were so early with this innovation that casinos didn’t get around to taking advantage of this feature for almost a decade. It is still in all our products today, and others have followed.
40 casino life magazine
Do your validators handle TITO? Yes, barcode reading was also a GPT first, introduced in our Generation 2 product in the mid 90’s. We also introduced 4-way TITO reading in our SA-4 validator in 2004. Both of these were way ahead of anyone else in this market.
How many Countries are GPT validators supplied into? We handle the currencies of more than 80 countries worldwide. Not all of these are in gaming, since we have validator products for other markets such as vending and ticket systems etc.
What has been your best seller recently? The SA-4 validator for quite some time now, simply because it is our high-end casino validator with a speed unmatched by anyone else yet. It’s a simple fact that most games, especially games like electronic roulette take more money when the validator is fast. The SA-4 is a very popular upgrade from both our G2 products and the Argus (G3) validator. The Falcon validator is a close runner. Originally designed for the vending market,
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