JCM continues to innovate on its FUZION technology, a pioneering system solution that builds on its bill validation and printing foundation to take casinos to the next level. That advancement will be showcased at the Indian Gaming Tradeshow & Convention in San Diego at the end of March.
Chris Blevens
In January, the world leader in transaction and payment technologies launched its 2.0 version of FUZION. By the summer, it will launch its 2.1 version that includes a cashless module, said Chris Blevens, JCM’s product manager of systems. FUZION has been deployed for three years, and this marks the first major update to it, he noted.
FUZION 2.0 is deployed at three casinos in the U.S. Hard Rock Sacramento was the first casino to get FUZION, Resorts World Las Vegas was second, and then FireKeepers Casino Hotel.
“Our FUZION system is built to help casinos manage their cash, getting it off the floor and to the count room – managing that whole process,” Blevens said. “What FUZION adds to that process is being able to see all the cash on the slot floor in real time. As those cash boxes are filling up, they will receive alerts before those cash box full errors start affecting their guests.”
A lot of count room managers have focused on that because the e-drop process is disruptive on the floor, and FUZION is one of the first systems to prevent that, Blevens said.
FUZION, which has been adding security modules, continually monitors every peripheral device in each EGM in real-time to help keep the casino running at peak efficiency and guard against suspicious activity and send alerts to security, Blevens said. With FUZION, finance and security can finally track every transaction at each asset with available high-resolution images of each note or ticket inserted into the EGM, he said.
“We believe that as FUZION gets deployed out to casinos, it will be a powerful tool for casinos to defeat criminal activity,”
Driven by FUZION technology, JCM solutions are involved in every aspect of the casino: audit, count room, entertainment, food and beverage, marketing, race and sports, security, slot operations, surveillance, table games – giving operators intelligence, security, and interconnected transactions that no other supplier can provide, Blevens said.
FUZION increases uptime and revenues with its real-time monitoring of iVIZION and GEN5. This allows FUZION to proactively notify the operator for predictive e-drops and TITO ticket fills, instead of operators acting responsively to an EGM out-of-service notification, Blevens said.
The FUZION 2.1 version that adds a cashless component “is the highway” to allow financial providers to use their digital wallet to push funds to the slot machine, he explained. There are no additional maintenance fees to support cashless. All that’s needed is to add a Bluetooth or NFC (Near-Field Communication) module and connect to the FUZION system, which Blevens called a more economical upgrade.
The 2.1 version is expected to be available by the end of the second quarter this year. The cashless module puts the choice in the operator’s hands – choice of technology, provider, and Bluetooth or NFC, Blevens said.
“When choosing cashless solutions, casinos can use their own CMS, requiring software and hardware upgrades to accomplish that,” he said. “When they go down that path though, they are kind of stuck and can’t shift out of that ecosystem. This is in contrast to the financial partners we have been working with – Global Payments and Everi – which are built to be hardware agnostic. Operators can make that cashless connection either through JCM or through other means to push those funds to the slot machine. I’m excited about the solution JCM is providing in all of this.”
In addition to FUZION, Blevens said JCM will be showing both of its payment solutions with Everi and Global Payments at the Indian Gaming Association conference in San Diego.
By the end of 2023, JCM expects to have several additional properties operating with its FUZION system.
