Newis, part of the Evoca Group, brings smart payment and connectivity to market and in Hi!, the company has created a product that is shaping the future of vending management. Testimony to this claim is the fact that, in the UK, Hi! has been installed on more competitor machines than on Evoca’s own equipment.

Hi! embraces MIFARE DESFire® technology, which complies to global standards, hence its ability to work with other systems and manufacturers. It provides a contactless, scalable solution for multi-applications, such as identity, access; transportation, loyalty and closed- loop micropayments. What’s more, MIFARE DESFire provides the most secure, practically unbreakable 128-bit encryptions.

With Hi!, bluetooth connectivity is built in; a great benefit to operators because bluetooth eliminates the need for a dedicated, hand-held terminal to download information from a machine. All that is required is a mobile phone, installed with the Hi! manager app, which is free to download. It means an operator can access audit information from a Hi! equipped machine and e-mail it in seconds from the field to Head Office, all through his or her mobile.

Hi! is also equipped with either Executive or MDB connections, with MDB boasting the latest enhancements to the protocol, connection technologies for peripheral devices found in vending machines, such as coin validators, banknote readers and so on.

The benefits? Lots of them; principally the possibility for an operator to vary prices between different user groups. This is achieved by using either Hi! tags, stickers, cards or keys. The ability to use stickers and tags is new and exclusive to Hi!, over the older Zip and MiZip systems. What does this mean? For instance, from the same machine an employee might be charged 50p for a cup of coffee, whereas a visitor to the site might pay £1 for the same drink.

Likewise, using Hi! an employer, for instance, can set different allowances for different user cohorts. For example, employees may be entitled to three coffees and a main meal every day, whereas visitors might be limited to drinks, rather than meals.

Another huge benefit of Hi! is that management can use it to control employee consumption as never before. Hi! can be used to allocate different refreshment budgets to different departments, allowing expenses to be audited and micro-managed.

Thanks to bluetooth connectivity, installing Hi! – in any machine – is simple. Previously, a MiZip box had to be fitted internally, together with a reader head. It was complicated… Now, there’s just the reader head and a connection cable. Easy.

Evoca Group experts set up the Hi! system for customers and train their in-house technicians in its use.

Unlike other equipment that performs similar functions, Hi! is very inexpensive to adopt. There are no management fees to find, no monthly licence to pay for.

A host of features in a system that is inexpensive, reliable, robust and powerful – the alternatives pale in comparison. ‘Game changer’ has become a hackneyed phrase, but that’s exactly what Hi! is and that is why we are confident that vending industry professionals will agree with us: Hi! is indeed worthy of the accolade ‘Best Payment System’ in The Vendies 2021.