Payment Technology
Open-Loop Payment
Term from the vending glossary
Open payment system universally accepted — girocard, credit card, NFC, Apple Pay. Opposite of Closed-Loop. Standard in modern vending; enables purchase without prior registration. Requires bank integration and transaction fees (approx. 0.3–1.5% per transaction).
Open Loop means: the user pays with what they already carry — debit or credit card, smartphone, watch. There is nothing to top up and no account balance to manage — and that's exactly what lowers the purchase barrier for occasional users.
The fee appears on your invoice. Transaction fees per transaction are charged either as a percentage or as a fixed amount; with a coffee costing just a few euros, a fixed fee becomes significant. So the real question isn't Open or Closed, but what proportion of sales runs through which payment method.