On every UK banknote there is still a written “promise to pay the bearer” its face value in gold, but it’s been redundant for a long time. How much longer will it be before even the idea of bearing a banknote is also consigned to history?
Many obituaries have been written for cash as its use over time declines. In the UK, for example, cash transactions have been dropping by more than 1% a year for years, and it’s been predicted that by 2027, only 16% of in-store sales will be in coins and notes.
The introduction of chip and PIN in the UK back in 2004 to add security and convenience to cashless payments has since been augmented with contactless bank cards and even phone apps, such as Apple Pay.
But many organisations and establishments, such as factories, offices, warehouses, schools, colleges, and universities, find an even greater benefit in providing a cashless environment for their staff or students that removes even these money substitutes, along with the need to carry a wallet or smartphone around their place of work or education.
Cashless systems, such as Synel’s ‘Synergy EPoS’, is such a system that allows administration of people on its database to easily make cashless transactions.
The benefits of a cashless EPoS system
A Cashless EPoS solution can operate in many ways, though the most common by far is a ‘top up’ system in which an employee at a company or parent of a student adds money to their payment account, either online or on-site. Synergy EPoS is integrated with a host of third-party payment providers including WisePay, Parent Pay, and sQuid. This removes the need for the customer to carry cards or cash every day. This can be a big benefit in both office and educational institutions, where dinner money need never get lost again.
Making Payments
Payments can be authorised at the till through different identification methods, including fingerprint recognition which eliminates the need to carry a card, fob, or remembering a PIN. Once the customer is identified and the transaction made, their cashless balance is automatically updated to reflect their purchase.
Naturally, traditional payments can still be taken via PDQ terminals or even through good old fashioned cash payments, which is ideal for visitors to site that are not enrolled in the solution.
More than just cashless catering
Cashless EPoS systems are an established solution in catering sales scenarios, but more and more businesses and institutions are seeing the benefits and versatility of cashless EPoS systems to provide many other services. The flexibility in solutions allow various ‘menus’ to be set up so that, for example, separate canteen sales and stationery sales can be catered for.
An effective cashless EPoS catering and product sales system offers a range of benefits:
- Managers can administer an entire cashless environment via an internet browser. Through a secure portal, it’s possible to manage an end-to-end cashless environment, from setting up tills and managing items and pricing to administering users and setting up promotions and discounts
- Report producing options give valuable insight across an entire cashless system, whether you are focusing on sales, specific products, or ‘tally’ groups of products
- Flexible architecture accommodates a wide range of applications, including building product lists and menus that can be assigned to specific tills, or groups of tills. It can even set menus to appear at set times, for example to cater for a ‘breakfast’ or ‘lunchtime’ menu
- Creates item group menus for specific purposes, e.g. ‘canteen’ and ‘stationery’ products
Synergy’s cashless environment EPoS solutions
Synergy EPoS is a cashless solution that meets the requirements of our varied business and institutional clients through its range of services and products, while enjoying particular success in supporting catering services in educational environments.
It incorporates all the benefits described above with a host of extra features that are essential for schools, colleges, and universities to manage staff and student purchases. For example, Synergy EPoS seamlessly integrates with ISAMS and SIMS management information systems (MIS) to make it easier to set up user accounts.
Various education-specific rules and policies can also be set up to manage features such as Free School Meals (FSM), daily spend limits, ‘duty meals’, fast lanes, etc.
Greater adaptability of services offered
The power of our system is in its connectivity and flexibility. While Synergy EPoS creates a cashless point of sales system, ad-hoc cash or card sales can also be made, and it can support an unlimited number of till units and a range of accessories, such as cash draws, barcode scanner and receipt printers.
It can also be designed to deliver a wide range of services, for example one of our customers, a school, uses it in their stationery shop.
Synergy EPoS is compatible with leading payment gateways, including Squid, ParentPay and WisePay, and automatically synchronises credit balances following every top-up and transaction.
Our customers like the fact that they have complete control over how they use the system, configuring various rules and limits into the system, including:
- Global or per person overdraft limits
- Special meal management, such as free school meals or work canteen meal allowances
- Daily spend limits
- Flexible VAT rates across customer groups, product types, or eat-in/takeaway
- Rewards programmes, where points are awarded to users based on spend, that can then be redeemed at the till
Protecting customers with allergies
The flexibility of Synergy EPoS even gives it the functionality to set up allergy alerts for specific users, warning operators to a customer’s allergies.
The alert then has to be acknowledged before a sale can be made, so the operator can check that none of the purchased items contain an allergen.
Is it time to go cashless?
Synergy EPoS features everything you need to deploy and manage a cashless environment, bringing benefits to educational environments but also for our business customers wanting to improve operations in their staff canteens and enhance their employee experience.
At Synel, we have experience developing and implementing a range of workforce management solutions that can be integrated to deliver game-changing results.
Access to our solutions is via an internet browser for management and administration, so each solution can be standalone or used as part of a wider ‘Synergy Workforce’ solution, integrated with other modules.
If you run a manufacturing business that uses Synergy time and attendance, adding Synergy EPoS for your staff canteen will be quicker and more efficient because your staff database will already be set up and ready to use. We make it as easy as possible.
If you would like to find out more about introducing a cashless payment system at your education establishment or business premises, contact contact Synel UK to talk to one of our advisors.
