7-Eleven Looks to Cash-In Online
7-Eleven plans to allow its interactive kiosks to accept cash for online purchases later this year, reports ZDNet News. It also plans to add the Vcom kiosks, currently being tested in nearly 100 stores, to each of its 5,800 stores during the next 18 months.
The convenience store chain estimates that 100 million U.S. consumers don’t have credit cards and 37 million are without a basic bank account. About half of 7-Eleven’s customers don’t have credit cards, says Pat Lally, chief executive of Cyphermint, whose Pay Cash system will allow the Vcom kiosks to accept cash.
The kiosks will feature the top 10 or so products, such as concert tickets, prescription drugs, airline tickets and maps, from about 10 to 15 merchants, says Brady Giddons, 7-Eleven’s director of business development for the kiosks. The idea is that customers will be able to use the machines quickly so that other customers can conduct transactions, he says adding that there may be a $1 fee for printing out a map from the Internet.
Cyphermint plans to charge merchants a commission on products sold through the Vcom kiosks and will sell advertisements on the machines, according to Lally. The company and 7-Eleven are considering charging consumers a $1 transaction fee for each purchase they make through the kiosks, he says. Cyphermint and 7-Eleven plan to share the revenue generated by the sales.
Moderator Comment: Will 7-Eleven’s interactive kiosk
be successful with the convenience store’s customers?
Bubba may surf. Whether he buys or not is an entirely
different question. [George
Anderson – Moderator]