Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
SECO (IOT.MI) has announced the upcoming expansion of its vending payment offering, with the KarL4 contactless payment terminal now available in Italy and scheduled to launch in the United States in early 2026. This milestone marks a new phase in SECO’s global roadmap for vending, strengthening the company’s role as a trusted partner for operators seeking secure, connected, and data-driven solutions.
SECO’s vending solution combines secure payment, smart connectivity, and AI-driven management to help operators reduce costs and optimize performance. The KarL4 terminal enables contactless transactions — including credit cards and mobile payments — with integrated LTE and offline support for maximum uptime. Already established in Germany — where KarL4 also supports reliable age verification via debit and credit cards for the sale of age-restricted products — this technology is now expanding to new markets.
To further broaden its offering, SECO is developing a QR Code payment gateway that will connect with multiple alternative payment methods, allowing consumers to complete transactions directly from their digital wallets. This new feature is expected to be available in the second quarter of 2026.
Complementing the payment ecosystem, Clea Vend, SECO’s cloud-based telemetry and analytics platform, provides vending operators with real-time monitoring, sales analytics, and automatic alerts for machine failures. By transforming operational data into actionable insights, Clea Vend helps reduce maintenance costs, prevent revenue losses, and improve fleet efficiency. Telemetry can be enabled through SECO’s payment terminals, the SECO Datalogger retrofit module, or standardized APIs, ensuring connectivity across both new and legacy machines.
“Our goal is to make connected vending truly accessible for operators worldwide,” says Martin Duemling, Senior Product Manager Payment at SECO. “By combining secure payments with data-driven insights and flexible connectivity, we empower our customers to run smarter, more efficient, and more transparent operations.”
SECO also offers retrofit HMI solutions that bring advanced functionality to existing vending machines. Integrated with payment terminals, these interfaces simplify the purchasing process and enable new marketing opportunities such as upselling, helping operators maximise revenues and improve customer engagement.
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