Undoubtedly, compared with the traditional vending machines, smart vending machine has tremendous advantages. For example, at any time and place, from the mobile phone, the operators can see the Real-time Sales Orders & Sales Report, as well as the Real-time Inventory, and they can modify the selling prices of goods remotely, and so on...which makes their operational job much easier, and higher efficiency.
However, smart vending machines are highly depend on the network, in the case that the network is poor or disconnected, probably it will affect the operation of the machines negatively, which makes many vending machine operators a big headache!
So, how do vending machine manufacturers solve this problem?
The following describes the solution by taking the machine from Micron Smart Vending as an example:


2.1 When the machine works with cash payment system only, their machines support offline purchase. In case there is NO network connection, the users can still buy from the machines by paying bank notes or coins. The machine will have record of every offline transaction, and save the data in the local file. When the machine connect to the network again, the data will be uploaded to the cloud-server automatically.
2.2 When the machine works with card payment system, the card reader has a SIM card inside, which means it works based on an independent network (not the same network as the machine), in case there is NO network connection for the machine, the users can still buy from the machines by swiping their cards or paying by Apple pay, Google pay, Samsung pay...However, if there is no network connection for the card reader, it will not work...card reader MUST have network connection in order to verify the relevant info. from the bank system.
2.3 When the machine works with E-wallets, then the machine MUST have network connection. So basically, the operators will mix the Cash payment system with E-wallets, so that the users can buy from the machines by cash when there is no network connection.
If you want to get more info. about Micron smart vending, please visit their websites or Youtube channel as follow:
www.micronvending.com
www.automatic-vendingmachines.com
Youtube Channel:
www.youtube.com/channel/UCCoR1uMn6lztRmoc7EmUFiQ/videos