Retail Cash Management Solution at Spar University

Located on the university campus in Utrecht, the Netherlands, the ‘Denk Different – Spar University’ convenience store is a sister of the Spar City Stores and developed for university campuses, targeting students on an on-the-go food mission. “We have a passion for students and the fast-paced world around them”, says Erwin Binneveld from Spar University. The retail store targets students with an on-the-go food mission and quick deals with large numbers of customers during busy times of the day.

Automated Cash Management

Due to the fact that Spar University, as a retail business, is very innovative and continuously looking for improvements and further development, they decided to rebuild all their stores equipped with 100% automated self-checkouts. However, due to possible issues with card payments and foreign students - cash is still relevant. For example, the Southern European region is still a more cash heavy society and additionally, not all students have MasterCard or Visa, in order to pay via card payments. So, even though the vision is to be a completely cash-free store, the necessity of offering cash payments is still there. For these retail stores, Erwin Binneveld says “Gunnebo’s SafePay is a great fit for the concept of being completely automated and part of the self-checkout set-up. We see the system is ‘easy-to-use’ for our customers, you can let the customer do the check-out without a cashier and without having to follow them in the process.” Spar University highlights the satisfaction in regards to flexibility and the service Gunnebo is providing.

SafePay - Closed Cash Management Solution

One of the important aspects of why Denk Different chose for the Gunnebo solution SafePay, is the fact of a complete closed cash management process. There is no opportunity to touch the money during the complete cash cycle – hence, there is an increase in security, it eliminates shrinkage and manual errors, and reduces time spend by staff for reconciliation and counting. The control on the store’s cash flow is increased and the overall process is secured, which is of high value with a daily average of 4-5000 customers in one store. Previously, there would be check-outs opened and closed during the day, depending on the volume of customers, which made the reconciliation challenging and cash intake was exposed to manual errors and shrinkage. The time normally spend for counting, reconciling and preparing the tills alone is worthwhile the investment of a SafePay solution, according to Erwin Binneveld.

The feedback from the team and the customers in regards to the SafePay solution is positive. It is a stable, reliable system that Spar University is happy with. There has been no need for educating the customer with signs at the check-out or elaborate introduction by the Spar staff – “it is an intuitive system”, is the feedback from store staff.