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Deepak Gupta markTech Graveyard

Tech Graveyard/consumer

Coin-Operated Machines (1890-Dying)

I have not used a coin to pay for anything in years. Neither have most people in cashless economies. The 134-year-old coin-operated machine category is in active decline.

Born 1890 · Still dying · Status: dying

Certificate of Death

Name of decedent

Coin-Operated Machines

Born
1890
Died
—
Age
136+

Cause of death

Tap-to-pay (Apple Pay, Google Pay, contactless cards) replaced coin-based payment infrastructure

Survived by

Tap-to-pay readers, QR code payment, in-app purchases, payment-enabled IoT devices

Invented by

Percival Everitt (UK, first coin-operated vending machine, 1883); commercial deployment 1890s

Status: DyingFinal breath: 2030

Filed by D. Gupta · guptadeepak.com

The hook

New York City began removing coin-only parking meters in 2014. By 2023 most US cities had migrated to app-based or tap-to-pay parking. The 134-year history of coin-operated infrastructure is in active decline.

Thesis. Coin-operated machines are dying because the entire backend changed. A coin slot is a payment terminal with one acceptable currency, no logging, and no remote management. A tap-to-pay reader logs every transaction, supports any currency the issuer accepts, and reports telemetry to a fleet management system. Same purpose. Completely different category.

The story

The origin

1883. Percival Everitt's coin-operated vending machine in London. 1890s commercial deployment in railway stations and post offices. The category expanded into the consumer economy across the next decades.

The expansion

1900 to 1985. Vending machines, payphones, parking meters (first coin meter: Oklahoma City, 1935), jukeboxes, laundry machines, arcade games. Coins powered the consumer cash economy in ways that quietly disappeared after contactless arrived.

The card era

1985 to 2010. Magnetic stripe and chip cards added to coins. Most coin-operated machines accepted both for a long transition. Reliability of card readers in outdoor weather kept coins relevant for longer than the equivalent indoor terminals.

The contactless inflection

October 2014 Apple Pay launched. Contactless cards proliferated. Parking, vending, and laundromats began migrating. Tap-to-pay transactions globally crossed $6T in 2024. Coin slots became the legacy fallback.

The category retreat

2020 to 2030. Coin slots remain in legacy infrastructure but are dying. Most new deployments are contactless-only. Cash itself is in decline: US cash share of transactions was about 16% in 2024, down from a majority position 30 years ago.

Key data points

  • Percival Everitt vending machine patent: 1883
  • First coin parking meter: Oklahoma City, 1935
  • Apple Pay launch: October 2014
  • Tap-to-pay transactions globally: $6T+ in 2024
  • US cash share of transactions 2024: about 16% (Federal Reserve)

Contrarian angle

The cashless transition is celebrated as progress. The unmeasured cost: a parallel economy of unbanked people who relied on coin-based access. Laundromats, vending machines, parking, payphones were some of the most accessible payment infrastructure in human history. The replacement requires a bank account, a payment card, or a smartphone. The accessibility regression rarely shows up in the tech press, and the people affected rarely write about it.

The flip side

What replaces it

The paired prediction in Future Tech.

Read the prediction

FAQ

Are there places where coin-operated machines are still common?

Yes. Laundromats in lower-income neighborhoods, parking in older municipal lots, vending machines in transit stations, and arcade games where coins are part of the experience.

Why did parking meters take so long to go digital?

Procurement cycles, capital budgets, and the engineering of outdoor weather-rated terminals that accept contactless payment reliably. Municipal procurement is slow even when the technical case is clear.

What is the future of cash in the US?

Long, slow decline. Cash will not disappear in this decade. It will keep shrinking as a share of transactions while remaining important for specific demographics and contexts.

Are tap-to-pay parking systems more secure than coin meters?

More auditable, yes. Tap-to-pay creates a transaction log that coin meters never produced. The security question is data privacy: every parking event is now tied to your payment identity.

What happens to people without smartphones in a cashless economy?

The contactless card path remains, which is more accessible than smartphone-only systems. But pure app-based parking or vending excludes anyone without a smartphone, which is a real and ongoing access gap.

More from guptadeepak.com

Want the technical deep-dive on what replaces this?

Read the companion article

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