Vending and unattended retail rely on stable connectivity for telemetry, cashless payments, remote service access, and fleet-wide monitoring. Connected IoT Limited provides industrial cellular router solutions designed for reliable operation in real-world deployments.
Payment terminals require low, consistent latency and session persistence to ensure transaction integrity. Local transaction buffering and store‑and‑forward behaviour on the controller or terminal are essential to avoid failed authorisations during short outages.
Hardware selection should reflect site constraints and operational requirements:
Payment terminals, the vending controller and optional sensors connect to a local LAN or switch. The LAN uplinks to an industrial cellular router with external antennas. The router enforces VLANs, QoS and firewall policies and terminates persistent VPN tunnels (TLS/IPsec) to a central gateway or SD‑WAN controller.
Payment authorisations are forwarded securely to payment processors over the VPN with session persistence and keepalives to reduce dropped authorisations. Telemetry and health metrics are streamed to the monitoring platform. Resilience is provided by SIM/operator diversity (dual‑SIM or multi‑operator eSIM), active link monitoring and automated failover rules; local buffering on the controller preserves transactions during short outages. In the event of a short connectivity loss, transactions are buffered locally and synchronised once the VPN session is re-established, preventing lost or duplicated payments.
Fixed-line connectivity is often unavailable, delayed, or managed by third parties in retail and public environments. Site Wi‑Fi may be shared, unstable or outside the operator’s control, increasing the risk of payment interruptions. Cellular connectivity allows vending operators to deploy machines independently of site infrastructure, maintain control over uptime and routing policies, and implement operator redundancy through dual‑SIM or multi‑operator eSIMs. While fixed lines can offer lower latency in ideal conditions, modern 4G and 5G networks provide sufficient latency consistency and throughput for cashless payments and telemetry when designed with session persistence and local buffering.
For related deployment guidance, see our POS & parking connectivity, DeviceHub management and VPN and antenna optimisation pages.
If you operate systems that require stable, secure connectivity, we can help specify the correct industrial router, antenna setup and connectivity approach for your deployment.