Cash kiosk specialist NRT Technology Corp has run a successful trial with a “major Macau operator” for what it says is its groundbreaking ‘Foreign Currency Exchange’ kiosk.
The kiosk can handle multiple major currencies in a single transaction from a mixed-currency bundle of banknotes. The trial version has been offering conversion either to Hong Kong dollars or ticket-in, ticket-out (TITO) tickets, with an escrow function giving the user the option of reviewing the offered conversion rate before confirming the transaction.
“We think it will be embraced widely and warmly by many other casinos in Asia,” said Art Ayow (pictured), NRT’s senior vice president of sales and business development, international, in an interview with GGRAsia. He was speaking during the recent Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia casino trade show and conference in Macau.
“We’ve been told by our customer that it has been warmly welcomed by its clientele. Today they conduct hundreds of transactions per day” using the product, he stated.
The Canada-based firm is optimistic the casino operator will order as many as six more units of the product, which has required careful and intensive collaboration between the industry and NRT.
“We are not using a traditional bank bill validator. We are actually using recycling technology,” the executive stated.
“In this case, you can input MOP [Macau patacas], Japanese yen, U.S. dollars and Chinese renminbi, or a combination of them,” he added.
Additionally, “the escrow part of the operation is being well received” by casino-goers, Mr Ayow noted.
For the property operator, a key element emphasised by NRT is that the product “removes the manual effort not to only process the transactions, but also to do the post-transaction audit or reconciliation”.
Mr Ayow noted that with the electronic kiosk, transaction records are “maintained instantly and automatically,” and it can “generate reports that are specific” to operator needs.
Depending on local regulations, operators may use the Foreign Currency Exchange kiosk to complement cage services by placing them near the cage, or place them at other points relative to the gaming floor.
The executive stated: “The product has been certified now by GLI, DICJ and AMCM, even though it’s not considered a gambling machine.” Those were references respectively to certification specialist and consultancy Gaming Laboratories International (GLI); Macau’s casino regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, also known as DICJ; and the Monetary Authority of Macao (AMCM).
Depending on regulations in particular markets, other functions could be added, the executive highlighted.
“We know that there is a slow but evolving transformation into cashless. And eventually I see it [the Foreign Currency Exchange kiosk] going into mobile payments. There’s even discussions about crypto,” Mr Ayow said.
