MEI SC Advance Is Available

This is an important milestone for both MEI and our customers, said Tom Nugent, president Gaming and Retail. CASHFLOW SC established the bar by which all other bill acceptors are measured when it was released in 2002. SC Advance has now proven it can improve upon a great product.
 
SC Advance continues to build upon a winning formula. It incorporates the latest available technology, and feedback from our increasing base of loyal customers, to further improve upon the features that yield the biggest benefits to operators.
 
The recent milestone of selling the one millionth CASHFLOW SC unit is an example of how the industry has embraced the MEI value proposition that is now carried forward with SC Advance. That accomplishment illustrates how the attributes directly responsible for consumer satisfaction and, ultimately, product performance acceptance, jam rate, security and cost of operation has raised the profile of bill acceptors and their role in operator profitability.      
 
It was very important for us to reward past investment in CASHFLOW SC by creating a new product that can operate in concert with the existing field base, said Mr. Nugent. This is consistent with our focus on adding value by lowering our customers operational costs and helping them to maximize precious capital.
 
That will be welcome news to the increasing number of MEI customers, which continues to grow from the application of the SC family in a number of applications including slot machines, self-checkout equipment, electronic safes, ATMs and a wide variety of kiosks. Those applications will benefit from additional value created by SC Advance through the following enhancements:

• an improved recognition system, which provides proactive security by utilizing transmissive sensors to see all the way through notes in multiple wavelengths.
• faster bill-to-bill speed, which will upgrade the consumer experience and speed up transactions to expand throughput.
• expanded memory, which will limit part numbers and submissions by allowing more notes to be recognized in a specific release of firmware.
• comprehensive barcode recognition, which processes barcode coupons in all four directions and improves acceptance on multi-width currencies.
• upgrade to USB 2.0, which speeds up communications with the host machine and even potentially expands functionality.

Because the enhancements are localized to the acceptor head, the next generation product can work hand-in-hand with legacy CASHFLOW SC units already in the field. This capability is facilitated by intelligent support tools that will be able to sense the product version and provide the appropriate software.
 
CASHFLOW SC began as a value-added product that was placed in slot machines, said Andy Reichlin, marketing director. Today, that role has expanded to security and cash management throughout operations. The increased functionality associated with SC Advance will continue to escalate the value derived from MEI products and accompanying services.
 
The next generation CASHFLOW SC not only is compatible with previous versions, but also with product extensions that have expanded the reach of bill acceptors to the entire cash management process. EASITRAX Soft Count, as an example, has changed rapidly the expectations for what a bill acceptor can offer building an installed base of nearly 70,000 slot machines by improving efficiencies associated with the cash drop process.
 
Other SC portfolio extensions including four sizes of cashboxes (SC, SCM, SCL and SCXL) and the CASHFLOW BNF (bunch note feeder) can be applied seamlessly to SC Advance. In fact, the speed increase associated with the next generation product results in a 50% improvement when using SC Advance with BNF.
 
SC Advance will replace CASHFLOW SC. MEI is currently in the process of determining the last production date for all CASHFLOW SC models. The equivalent CASHFLOW SC models for the SC Advance products now available, as part of this Retail release, will be produced through the end of July 2012. MEI will continue to sell spare parts for CASHFLOW SC units and guarantees software updates for seven years from the date the product is last produced.

About MEI

MEI systems are relied upon for more than two billion transactions per week in over 100 countries. The company developed the first electronic coin mechanism in the 1960s followed by the first electronic non-contact note validator, and more recently the EASITRAX Soft Count system. Recently, MEI reached a milestone of selling more than four million note validators and five million coin mechanisms worldwide. Its products are in widespread use in the gaming, vending, soft drink, amusement, transportation, retail, and kiosk markets. For more information on MEI and its products visit www.meigroup.com.