52% of UK Arcade Visitors Now Prefer Cashless — What It Means for Your Game Floor

Two details are worth reading carefully. First, contactless bank cards alone (34 percent) are nearly as popular as cash (43 percent)—this is not a niche behaviour; it is mainstream. Second, prepaid game cards sit at only three percent, which tells you something useful: visitors do not want a special-purpose card they have to buy first; they want to pay with whatever is already in their pocket or phone.

The Age Gap Is the Real Story

The generational split is sharper than the headline figure:

· Aged 25 to 34: 75 percent prefer cashless—contactless card, mobile wallet, or prepaid game card—against 20 percent who choose cash.

·Aged 65 and over: 68 percent still prefer cash—but more than a quarter of this group (26 percent) now prefer a cashless option.

Read together, these two lines rule out the two most common operator mistakes. Going fully cashless today would turn away a large share of older visitors who still arrive with coins. Staying fully coin-operated would put friction in front of the three-quarters of 25-to-34s who expect to tap and play—and that is the age group that fills a floor on a Saturday.

The practical conclusion is a dual-track floor: the same venue, the same machines, accepting both. A cabinet that can only take one of the two is turning away paying customers at the door. And the good news is that on modern redemption equipment this is not a choice between two machines — it is a choice between two parts, and the part can be changed.

Top-Up Speed Is a Revenue Line, Not a Convenience

The research also asked what would have the greatest effect on how much visitors spend during a visit. The answers were dominated by friction:

Almost half of all responses—44 percent—point at the same thing: remove the wait, and the spend goes up. Instant top-up (25 per cent) and shorter queues (19 per cent) are both friction problems, not marketing problems. A player standing in a queue is a player not playing, and each minute in that queue is lost revenue that no discount will recover afterwards.

Loyalty (16 percent) and personalized offers (15 percent) matter too, but note the order: they only work after the payment layer works. A rewards program that requires a customer to carry a separate card—when only three percent of visitors want a prepaid game card—is a program that will not be used.

What This Means for the Machines You Buy

This is where a payment trend becomes a purchasing decision. If your floor has to accept both cash and cashless, your equipment has to support both—and the specifications that make that possible should be confirmed before the order is placed, not after the machines land.

1. One position, two options

On most redemption machines the coin acceptor and the card reader share the same mounting position on the front door. That means a machine can be built for coins, or built for a card reader — and it can be switched later, provided the cabinet was prepared for it. Ask for the reader mounting position to be left open and a blank panel fitted for transport, so the opening stays sealed until your card system provider installs their reader on site.

2. Pulse output versus full integration

There are two levels of connection between a card reader and a game machine, and they are not interchangeable:

·Pulse output—the reader sends a credit signal to the machine for each tap. This is the standard, universal setup, and it handles coin-in only.

·Serial integration (RS232 / USB)—two-way communication, so the ticket count can be written back to the customer's card as electronic credits (an e-ticket system). This requires protocol documents from your card system provider and is a custom integration—cost and lead time should be confirmed in advance.

If your venue runs entirely on cards with no paper tickets, you will want the second option. Ask for it early.

3. Do not get locked into one system

Card systems differ by market—Intercard and Embed dominate in the US, Sacoa and Intercard in the Middle East, Semnox in India, and Nayax itself operates across multiple regions. A machine that is "cashless ready" in the generic sense is worth less than one built to your reader's actual cut-out dimensions, power requirement and interface type. Confirm which system you are on before the order is released.

A Practical Three-Phase Transition

Nothing in the research suggests operators should rip out coin handling overnight. A staged approach captures the cashless majority early while keeping the cash minority playing: