IP 2014 Expo Participant PayRange Lands Funding, Launches Nationally

If there ever was a sector screaming for modernization—and especially mobilization—it would be vending machines. The potential to know inventory in advance, to know which of the 10 machines nearby have three of the desired item you and your friends want, to be able to place a group order and to pay in advance and to then have the machine dump it all into a bag, these are the areas where vending machines need to go.

One 4-month-old mobile vending machine group that is toying with various forms of vending machine modernization—PayRange—is attracting an unusually large list of some of the best-connected mobile investors in the industry. “On the heels of a $2.75 million funding round that closed in July, PayRange has disclosed a list of high-profile investors,” reported Vending Times. “It includes Nyca Partners, which includes Osama Bedier, former head of Google Payments; Hans Morris, former president of Visa; and Max Levchin, cofounder of PayPal; Google Ventures; Anil Aggarwal and Jonathan Weiner, founders of the Money 20/20 conference; Barbara Corcoran, one of the investors on ABC’s Shark Tank; serial entrepreneur and investor Phil Nadel; and Oscar-winning actor Jared Leto.”

Bedier said the backward nature of vending machines is why there is so much potential in this space. “There is a huge market for mobile payments on machines. This space is still 95 percent cash-based and has yet to be solved in an elegant way,” he said. “I am a huge supporter of big ideas applied to hard problems and PayRange has the most impressive solution I’ve seen to address it so far.”

The current version of the software allows a shopper’s smartphone “to handle the entire vending transaction process over their cellular networks, while using Bluetooth personal area networking to actuate the vend. The system, which uses a small dongle that plugs into existing machines and a mobile app for iPhone and Android users, was tested by 200 operators in 20 states and is now making its commercial debut,” the story said.