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Start-up company Convendium says it has been surprised by the number of people using text messaging to pay for goods through its vending machines.
Convendium launched its Vendi vending machines in January and has them installed at locations including Auckland Airport, Les Mills, AUT and Massey University.
The machines allow shoppers to pay for convenience goods using eft-pos, credit cards, or by texting a code using a Vodafone mobile phone and having the value of the purchase deducted from their pre-paid balance or added to their monthly statement.
Convendium chief executive Craig Sinclair said although he initially expected the texting option to appeal to around 5 or 10 per cent of the users, it had been accounting for about 20 per cent of transactions.
The "txt-to-pay" system used by Convendium was developed by technology company Fronde, which also developed the TXT-a-Park, allowing motorists to pay for their parking via cellphone.
"Being able pay by mobile phone is appealing to an internet-savvy generation of shoppers," said Sinclair. "We felt that it was essential our machines could offer this payment method along with credit and debit cards, since consumer trends are strongly favouring cashless payment for everyday purchases."
Fronde principal consultant James Valentine said text payment had proven to be a popular option with parkers. The number of parking transactions conducted by text was now about equal to the number completed using credit cards.
"It shows ... that as an electronic payment mechanism, text payment - when used properly - is as compelling, if not more so, than credit card."
He expected mobile phone-powered vending machine sales to grow, but said the high usage of eftpos cards in New Zealand, and improvements to eftpos payment technologies, meant card payments would remain popular.
"The challenge for us as mobile payment developers is to make [text payment] as simple and easy to use as possible so that when it's competing against other payment types it competes well," Valentine said.
Meanwhile, Sinclair said he hoped to finalise within weeks a deal with a major European service provider which was interested in using Convendium's vending technology.
"They [the European company] have got an existing business which has been performing poorly.
"This gives them the business tool they need to fix that and grow it into new markets - which they haven't attempted because what they had wasn't working," he said.
"It validates the technology in a major market."
