Interestingly, the move to place the POS in front of the customer rather than handing our cards to the cashier, is a valiant effort to make things more secure and efficient, I suppose, so I kind of approve of this change, although it sometimes gets crazy to figure out a new POS terminal for myself, and that's the most stress-filled point of shopping when the whole line and the cashier are all waiting for you to pay and checkout and GTFO ASAP.
The self-checkouts are the greatest waste ever. They never work, but most stores have a single, actual checkout line these days. Things literally got worse, no matter how you slice it. The real checkout line is long, and the self-checkout is incapable of being useful for anything other than a couple of items. Even then, it just yells at you every step of the way.
I struggle to understand what would motivate it, from the perspective of the parking lot owner. I would presume the up-front cost of the old terminals was already paid off. And they certainly are more user-friendly.
Is it that the new smartphone payment providers are taking a smaller fee? That they are easier to switch between if the fees increase? Or what?
It’s a market like hotel WiFi. Early on, fancy hotels signed long contracts for shitty WiFi. Remember when you’d pay $10 for some awful WiFi service at the Marriott? Those parking things are the same.
I consulted for an entity that was paying $7.50 for a $25 dip. There’s hundreds of competing smartphone apps… you can even buy a square reader in a trivial scenario and pay 3%. In the government space, stuff like EZPass at airport parking costs $2-5 per transaction!
Physical infrastructure is to be avoided.