The U.S. Department of Treasury has never been good at meeting deadlines. Just weeks ago, they announced they will miss their latest 2020 target for a new $20 bill by eight years. It’s nothing new. They missed the promised date on the last $100 note upgrade by more than a year. While there may be some folks who this lack of timeliness bothers, it won’t be anyone in the slot world. At best, a new bill design means a fair amount of labor and administrative work to update the software provided by each slot machine manufacturer for their respective bill validators. Worst case: you could be forced to buy all new bill validators. That happened a few years back when a flurry of new bills was introduced that maxed out the memory of older validators from JCM, MEI and others.
New $100 bills were launched in 1996 and 2013. Redesigns for $20 bills came in 1998 and 2003. The $5 bills and $10 bills came in 2000 and 2008 and 2000 and 2006 respectively. The $10 note was the one that triggered the most replacements. However, each of the validator manufacturers responded with new models that were both faster, better and had a lot more memory. That, combined with no new bills in the last five years, has meant a period of relative calm.
Bu
t talk of new notes began emerging in 2016 when then-Treasury secretary Jack Lew announced that the $20, $10 and $5 bills would honor civil and women’s rights icons Harriet Tubman, Alice Paul and Marian Anderson. He said in February 2016 the new bills would be released in 2020 to mark the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment which gave women the right to vote.
Fortunately, most of the newer validators have enough memory to handle all the old bills and these proposed new notes.
But there is another problem lurking that not all slot operators realize. Many mistakenly think that their bill validator software comes from the major providers like JCM or CPI (providers of MEI and CashCode). That’s not how it works. When bill updates or new designs arrive, those validator vendors make changes to their software, but they provide this new code to the slot machine manufacturers, not the casino operators. Each individual slot vendor (IGT, Aristocrat, Scientific Games, Konami, Everi, and others) must make a version of that code for their specific slot machines. It is only that version that can update a machine.
Here’s the rub. There are some “obsolete” slot machines that are still going strong that will be left out. “Obsolete” in slot-speak doesn’t mean the machine won’t work, or that it’s not a strong performer. It means that the manufacturers no longer provide parts, service, chips and (importantly) bill validator upgrades. There are plenty of secondary vendors that can supply parts, glass, chips and decals; but these suppliers haven’t been able to produce the bill validator software.
IGT and Bally (now owned by Scientific Games) confirmed that they would not support note updates for their S2000 and S6000 games respectively. These two, classic reel-spinner cabinets have been top performers in various themes in high limit rooms for over 20 years. They are still producing win indexes today well above average and in some cases 3.0 or higher across the country.
If Ms. Tubman made her planned debut next year, that would mean these machines would only accept older $20 notes and not the new bills. It would be a customer nightmare and a serious service issue for change attendants on the floor. While there has been no news about validator support on other popular older games like the Aristocrat MAV 500 or early Konami Podiums, the loss of the two iconic reel games would be bad enough.
It’s also unlikely that any vendor will relent, since doing so exposes them to liabilities if there are problems in cash handling. With no reward (they haven’t sold these games for years), there’s little reason to take on this risk.
Not to worry, at least for a while. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said two weeks ago the first Tubman bill now won’t happen until 2028 (if at all). There may or may not be politics involved. President Donald Trump has admitted a fondness for Andrew Jackson and was recently quoted as calling the move to replace Jackson with Tubman as “pure political correctness.” Likewise, the president has not been known to be a champion of liberal women’s issues in general.
So, it’s a shame that we’re going to miss the opportunity as a nation to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the women’s suffrage movement with a new bill. But it’s also a fortuitous circumstance that some classic games will be given a stay of execution for at least another eight or nine years. That comes with the caveat, and the hope, that there’s not a serious counterfeit scam that forces major bill validator software updates earlier.
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