The payment, pricing and supply questions that stall a first order.
Most first orders stop on the same handful of questions. These are the answers we give by email, written down so they can be checked against a specification sheet.
Payment and settlement
The part that decides whether the cabinet can take money in your market at all.
How does a guest pay for a shared power bank?
Through the terminal or the app the station is configured with: a card reader, a QR code that opens a payment page, or a wallet the market already uses. Which of those applies is decided per market, because an acquirer that boards a card terminal in one country will not necessarily board the same model in the next.
Can the station take cards?
Yes, where a certified terminal is available for your acquirer. The terminal is part of the configuration, not an accessory: the model, the certification and the settlement currency are agreed before the cabinet ships.
Do we need our own merchant account?
Usually yes, if you want the money to land in your account directly. Some operators start on the platform account and settle weekly; that is a commercial arrangement and it is written into the software terms, not into the hardware.
How is a rental priced?
Almost always as a time ladder: a base fee for the first hour, then a step per hour, capped at a daily maximum. The cap matters more than the base, because it is what stops a guest abandoning a pack instead of returning it.
What happens if a guest never returns the pack?
The rental hits the daily cap and then the deposit or the card authorisation covers the pack. Which of the two applies depends on the market and on the acquirer rules, and it has to be on the signage before the first rental.
Which currency should the tariff be in?
The currency the guest earns in, not the one you bank in. Multi-currency settlement is an acquirer feature; if yours does not offer it, price in the local currency and accept the conversion cost.
What happens when the network drops?
The station should keep releasing and accepting packs and settle when the link returns. Confirm that behaviour for the exact firmware: a cabinet that refuses rentals when offline turns a router reboot into a queue at the desk.
Is the back office included?
The software that runs the stations, the tariff, the site map and the ad scheduling is part of the configuration. Licence terms, updates and what happens if you stop paying are commercial questions with a written answer, not a feature list.
Ordering, documents and warranty
What happens between the quotation and the first month of operation.
What is the minimum order?
One station. A trial on a single site is the normal way to start, and the route grows once the returns are measured rather than projected.
How long does delivery take?
Quoted per order. Configuration, marking and the destination decide it, and a date given before the configuration is fixed is a guess.
Can the station carry our brand?
Private label is quoted per order: housing marking, packaging and the guest screens. The minimum quantity depends on the build, so it is quoted rather than published.
Which documents come with the shipment?
Commercial invoice, packing list, and the certificate files your broker asks for, in the names that broker expects. Ask for the list early: a missing file at the port costs more than the file.
What about warranty and spare parts?
Terms are supplied with the quotation, and the spare part list is quoted with the order so that a bay failure in month seven does not become a second shipment of one part.
One question we cannot answer from here
Which terminal your acquirer will board. It changes with the market, the acquirer and the merchant category, and a supplier who answers it without asking your country is guessing.
Send the country, the currency and the entity type. The reply is a terminal list and the certification each one needs, which is the answer you can take to the bank.
- What to send
- Country, currency, entity type, venue type
- What comes back
- Terminal options and their certification
- Turnaround
- One reply, from one person
- What it costs
- Nothing, and no account is created
Still stuck on one answer?
Write the question as you would ask a colleague, and the reply comes with the sheet attached.