When it comes to preventing theft and fraud, security leaders need to consider the security of the transactions customers use at different locations. A location that primarily receives crash will require different security measures than places that use credit cards or contactless payments. 

Cantaloupe recently completed its 2023 Micropayment Trends Report, which studied micropayment (transactions less than $10) trends at food and beverage vending and at amusement machines throughout the United States and Canada in 2022. The results showed that consumers are increasingly using cashless payment methods — even for smaller ticket transactions.

According to the report, consumers spent more than $2.5 billion at food and beverage vending machines in 2022, a 19% increase over 2021. At those particular machines, cashless payments accounted for 67% of all sales in 2022, an increase of 11% from 2021. Of those cashless sales, tap to pay made up an average 53% of cashless sales for the year.

In the amusement category, the data around cash versus cashless payments follows a similar pattern. Cashless payments made up an average of 73% of total sales volume at amusement gaming machines in 2022. 

Additionally, the adoption of Europay, Mastercard and Visa (EMV) security standards for payment cards also has had an impact on self-service retail. 2022 was the year that EMV became the new normal at food and beverage vending machines, self-service kiosks and micro markets. The report found that EMV payments grew more than 350% as a share of cashless sales at food and beverage vending machines over the course of the year.