Expert advice for developing, deploying and managing self-service kiosks
Have you ever wanted to start your kiosk project, but found an excuse to delay the launch and the project fizzled?
Assuming the project is worth doing, then why does this happen? I think in many cases it’s because we let our fears of the unknown get in the way.
Here are a few of the reason’s I’ve encountered why some of our potential clients get cold feet and their kiosk project and never get started.
Continue reading “What’s Your Excuse for Not Starting Your Kiosk Project?”
It’s easy to dispense bills from your kiosk like a cashier when you integrate an MEI BNR bill recycler into your website using JavaScript and KioskSimple. This article will include a detailed JavaScript website code example so you can try it out for free.
You’re probably reading this article because you’ve decided to create a website which needs to accept cash payments, but also needs to dispense change in whole bills. Maybe your website is running on a self-service kiosk or unattended payment solution.
Integrating a bill recycler can be extremely time-consuming and dispensing cash from your kiosk is fraught with risk. Fortunately we’ve done all the heavy lifting in KioskSimple to provide you with a high-level, simple and straightforward JavaScript API for the MEI BNR so you can get started dispensing cash quickly.
Continue reading “How to Integrate an MEI BNR Bill Recycler into Your Website with JavaScript”
Does your system have too much downtime and you don’t even know it? Are your customers running away to your competitors without your knowledge?
The answer may be YES if your system experiences regular downtime and worst of all you may not even be aware of the extent of the damage until your reputation has been irreparably tarnished.
The term ‘downtime’ derives from when a system, combination of systems, or any application or service is unable to perform a desired operation. Downtime can be expected and scheduled, such as planned maintenance, or it can be an unintended interruption of service such as a server overload or device failure.
This article is intended to help broaden your thinking about the costs and types of system downtime.
Continue reading “System Downtime May Be Costing You More Than You Think”
It’s easy to integrate an MEI bill acceptor into your website with a little JavaScript and KioskSimple. This article will include a detailed code example and a sample website so you can try it out for free.
You’re probably reading this article because you’ve decided to create a website which needs to accept cash payments. Maybe your website is running on a self-service kiosk or tablet and is attached to an MEI bill acceptor.
This example will work for any MEI bill acceptor which uses the MEI EBDS protocol. At the time of this writing this includes the MEI AE and SC series bill acceptors. Continue reading “How to Integrate an MEI Bill Acceptor into Your Website with JavaScript”
This article covers a simple way to accept card present transactions from your website using a Magtek credit card reader, JavaScript and KioskSimple.
You’re probably reading this article because you’ve decided to put your website on a self-service kiosk or tablet. Rather than requiring your customers to enter all of their payment information, it makes more sense to have them swipe their credit card and process the transaction like a POS.
This also results in lower fees from the credit card processor, which is always a big plus.
This article includes an in-depth example, including source code, for integrating a Magtek credit card reader with your website via JavaScript and KioskSimple.
This example also processes the payment via Authorize.Net, which you can optionally substitute for your own payment gateway. Please contact us if you want help substituting a different payment gateway.
Continue reading “How to Accept Card Present Transactions from Your Website with JavaScript”
Want to automatically populate the payment fields on your website with a credit card reader? We’ve made this really easy to accomplish using a little JavaScript, KioskSimple and a Magtek credit card reader.
I’m guessing you’re reading this article because you’ve decided to place your Ecommerce website on a self-service kiosk and want to save time with data entry when processing payments.
In this example I’ll create a simple HTML payment form and use JavaScript to communicate with a Magtek credit card reader to auto-populate the payment fields. Continue reading “How to Use a Credit Card Reader to Populate Payment Fields on a Website in JavaScript”
Now that you’ve decided to dispense cash from your kiosk with a bill recycler I want to make you aware of the pitfalls to avoid. Dispensing cash can be invaluable for making change to your customers like a human cashier, but also introduces several new challenges which we’ll address in this article.
Most people familiar with bill acceptors think of a bill recycler as simply an add-on component which dispenses cash, but this is far from the case.
Dispensing bills greatly increases the complexity of the device and the logic required by your kiosk application in order to gracefully complete a cash transaction.
Don’t worry, all of these challenges can be overcome with careful planning and the reduced cashier expenses will be well worth the investment. Continue reading “5 Pitfalls to Avoid When Dispensing Cash from Your Kiosks”
The ability to dispense cash from your kiosk can be invaluable for making change and reducing the need for human cashiers. Traditional bill acceptors only accept cash, but bill recyclers have the ability to both accept and dispense cash like a human cashier
Your customers will appreciate your kiosks giving them change in bills, rather than dispensing a mountain of coins.
Even worse than dispensing coins is being mailed a check for the change. Yes, I’ve actually seen this done.
So why would you ever use a regular bill acceptor again? Continue reading “How to Make Your Kiosk Dispense Cash Like a Cashier”
Kiosk software is a security application specifically designed to transform a PC or tablet into a self-service kiosk. The kiosk software is also responsible for locking down your kiosks operating system to prevent malicious user tampering, which is why kiosk software is often referred to as “kiosk lockdown software.”
Some common features of kiosk software include:
Ensures that your kiosk application is always running
In most cases the kiosk operator will desire to deliver their content in the form of a website or native application running on their kiosk. An example of a native application for a kiosk running Microsoft Windows would be a .NET WPF application. For the sake of brevity, for the remainder of this article I’m going to refer to the website or native application running on your kiosk as “your kiosk application.”
What’s the difference between EMV compliance and PCI compliance? The short answer is they’re both guidelines for protecting cardholder data for the purpose preventing fraud, but they focus on different elements of the credit card transaction.
“To clarify it even further and more simply, PCI is about making sure the card data doesn’t get stolen and is secure in the first place and EMV is making sure if the data IS stolen that the content is rendered useless.” – CPI PCI and EMV: What’s the difference? Continue reading “EMV Compliance vs. PCI Compliance”