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Finland’s Slot Machine Association (RAY) raises funds to support health and welfare organisations and to give joy and excitement to people. Slot machine technology is going through a radical transformation. Some slot machines can already be operated with bank cards.
According to technology director Pasi Riihilahti of RAY, the means of payment is one of the new challenges RAY is facing. In a research by RAY, as much as 40 per cent of the respondents reported they don’t play because they don’t carry change in their pockets anymore. ”We already have a number of machines that can be operated with payment cards, such as Visa Electron, and soon with the new Debit chip cards. The law prohibits playing on credit, so credit cards won’t do,” Riihilahti says. ”After a vast amount of work in collaboration with the banks we’ve created a payment system that allows playing without coins. It also involves checking the age of the players as minors aren’t allowed to play on our slot machines.”
Over 19,000 public slot machines After competitive bidding RAY outsourced its ICT infrastructure to allow its own personnel focus on their core task which is to develop the games. The future is about playing happily and safely together, and slot machines offer experiences and adventures unlike the ones in the olden days. ”Our ICT infrastructure is taken care of our partner Fujitsu. We have been happy with our arrangement as things run smoothly and evolve. We have our own workstations and on-site support is provided by another supplier. We also use a SAP system to process our operational transaction data. Along with SAP we use other systems in sales and marketing as well as customer-related functions”. RAY’s Patja service currently covers all in all 850 workstations and 60 servers. The service agreement incorporates the central system of RAY’s slot machine network which holds 19,000 slot machines. In addition, the availability services of the SAP system are also included in the agreement. ”Our collaboration with Fujitsu dates back two years now. The greatest benefit of it has been the ability to focus on our core operation. Besides the day-to-day operation of the ICT infrastructure, our partner takes also care of its development. It is beyond our resources to remain abreast the extremely fast developing technologies,” Riihilahti says.
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