USA Technologies to buy rival Cantaloupe Systems for $85 million

USA Technologies, a provider of payments technology enabling card and mobile payments at vending machines in the U.S., is buying Cantaloupe Systems, which has its own line of vending machine payments solutions in the U.S. and other markets, for $85 million.

The combination will expand USAT’s reach to new markets including Canada, Australia and South America, and Cantaloupe’s Seed Cloud solution dovetails with USAT’s existing e-Port Connect Platform to enrich the menu of cashless payment services available in the unattended retail market, USAT said in a Tuesday press release.

Malvern, Pa.-based USAT, which launched 15 years ago, has steadily pushed to displace cash with card payments at vending machines and in the last few years it added mobile payments support at thousands of units. The company operates 300,000 vending machines, a third of which support mobile payments via Near Field Communication, a company spokesperson said.

Early this year USAT launched a loyalty program with Apple Pay for use at its NFC-enabled U.S. vending machines.

San Francisco-based Cantaloupe also supports card and mobile payments at vending machines, and its Seed Cloud solution is used to manage 200,000 machines at more than 700 vending operators around the world, according to its website.

“We believe the strength of the teams, as well as the collective product and service portfolio, will provide our customers with a true enterprise software platform that’s unrivaled in the markets we serve,” said Stephen P. Herbert, USAT’s chairman and CEO, in the press release.

The transaction will close this week, according to the release.