Digital Self-Service Touch Monitor Kiosks deliver mobile top up services across globe
Self-service touch monitor kiosks’ rise and expansion have seen solutions being exploited by host of retail sectors to cut costs on business that work on fractional net profits and one such business lies in providing top ups for prepaid sim cards for mobile phone operators.
Prepaid phone cards are popular in every corner of world. From Kuala Lumpur to Dublin or Mexico City to Hanoi on every street corner their will be a small convenience store or a street hawker selling mobile prepaid sim cards and scratch cards for topping up mobile phone credit. In fact, globally, it is considered that in 2019 it contributed to $265 billion in sales according to mobile financial services company Juvo. In developing markets it’s increasing and don’t think for a moment that revenues are down; the margins are considered upwards ranging from 40-55% for certain telecommunication providers.
So back in 2010, when KT Group was first approached by a leading Russian business enterprise, Kiber Pay, that they wished to launch a self-service kiosk to provide mobile top ups digitally in local German and Austrian markets, little did our CEO know that it would become an instant magnet and growth market.
We did, in fact, start our journey into self-service custom design due to opportunity that Kiber Pay project offered at that time and we designed the SFI kiosk, which was deployed nationwide in Germany and Austria, in major transportation railway hubs.
A year later we were approached by a leading Czech IT company that was entertaining a service to provide a solution for one of the leading local telecommunication mobile phone operators in the Czech market. These terminals were noticed by another operator who was visiting the county at the time but wished to bring it to his local market in Vietnam. In Vietnam, Paylink was considered at the time one of the leading mobile phone top-up providers and in total KT Group delivered 400 top-up kiosks based on its simple but effective touch monitor kiosk models, the VFS and Simplicity Wall.
These top-up kiosks are built to provide a cost-effective solution to deliver a ticket after payment that provides the user with both a receipt for payment and also the all-important serial code used to credit your mobile device. These kiosks typically consist of a touch monitor and computer, a receipt printer, cash accepter and coin validator and in certain regions a bar code scanner if the ticket is required to be scanned to fulfil the service. The operators found self-service was an ideal platform as margins and ability to provide services 24×7 met ideal conditions for global markets.
Our range included both indoor and outdoor touch monitor kiosk variations, and in some cases the touch monitor kiosks were required to give change back to users and dispatch sim cards for new users. As the kiosks can also provide a host of digital services, they make an ideal small business for retailers seeking new sources of income.
