What You Should Know Before Purchasing a Bill Pay Kiosk

Businesses are turning to bill payment kiosks to enhance customer experience through self-service payment. Bill pay kiosks offer customers a secure transactional solution and provide businesses with a new way to improve customer service. While many businesses are eager to join the self-service movement, there are factors to determine before investing in a self-service payment solution. Below, we’ve listed the top five questions to ask when considering a bill pay kiosk.

Use Case for Payment Kiosks: What problem are you trying to solve?

The first consideration of a payment kiosk should be the use case. What will the kiosk be used for specifically? While this may seem like a simple question, considering “bill pay” is in the name, there are many different types of payment a kiosk can support. For example, more traditional use cases include tuition collection, rent payment and bill collection. However, advances in self-service technology now allow kiosks to dispense tickets, print documents and encode cards to meet the demands of multiple industries.

Business Model: How do you plan on conducting sales?

How a business plans to conduct sales in a self-service environment is a key factor in determining the best bill pay solution. It’s important to know what the expectations of the customer will be. For example, is the expectation that a customer will scan and purchase a physical item? Is the kiosk being used to sell a service, pay for a bill, or will the kiosks be used to expand the shelves by selling more products than a business can carry in store?

Payment Security: How will you protect user information?

Robust security is crucial for protecting user information. The security features control how the kiosks is authorizing, collecting and storing personal identifiable data. Depending on the use case, EMV and/or PCI compliance may be required to protect users against fraud. EMV is the global standard for credit cards using chips to authenticate transactions. PCI is the Industry data security standard designed to ensure that all companies that accept. process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) may be used to ensure additional security compliance.

Software: Who’s creating the user interface and maintaining the platform?

The kiosk software platform and application will determine the user interface and how customers engage with a bill pay kiosk. A comprehensive bill pay software solution should provide businesses with custom reports, system performance management, system security, a wide range of component support and configure with all major credit/debit cards.

Hardware: What are the physical requirements?

The use case, business model, security and software determine which devices and components are needed for the bill pay kiosk to succeed. Comprehensive software will allow component integration from a large inventory of devices. Device and component  integration can include a printer, card encoder, dispenser, scanner, VoIP and more.

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