A vending machine is an unpromising place to stage a technological revolution. The audience is hungry. The purchase is small. Nobody wants a demonstration. George R. Jensen Jr., who founded USA Technologies in January 1992, spent years building a business around a deceptively difficult proposition: let these machines accept something other than coins and crumpled bills. The future would have to fit through a small opening in a metal door.
By June 2010, he could describe the challenge with two prices. The first ePort had cost $2,000. The newer ePort EDGE sold for $199. Between those figures lay a large part of the work. A payment reader could be clever, wireless and thoroughly modern, yet still make little sense to the person collecting the proceeds from a machine full of inexpensive snacks.
Jensen’s career is full of changes in scale and scenery. He had worked in securities, produced television and run a company that added color to black-and-white films. Eventually he would publish books about Scripture. Cashless vending occupied nearly twenty years between those chapters. Its drama was mostly invisible to the customer, which was rather the point.
The future needed a smaller invoice
When Jensen addressed shareholders in 2010, he listed the obstacles in plain commercial terms. Hardware had been expensive. Wireless modems that once cost more than $300 had come down to approximately $40. Communications had been costly and unreliable. A convincing product needed several pieces of the surrounding technology to become affordable at roughly the same time.
That list gives his work a useful sense of proportion. Predicting that people might use cards at vending machines was one task. Waiting, designing and financing a system that operators could justify buying was another. A soda does not become more valuable because the equipment accepting payment has acquired an impressive specification sheet.
The company also worked on the less glamorous parts of adoption. Its 2010 product offering bundled the reader with merchant setup, wireless activation, payment services, remote updates and support. Programs called QuickStart and JumpStart helped customers acquire hardware without an upfront capital investment. Selling the possibility meant dealing with installation, administration and the operator’s cash budget.
There is a particular kind of business patience in this. A new payment method asks an owner to spend money, disturb equipment that already works and trust another supplier. Every extra agreement or service provider adds a reason to postpone. The company’s answer was to gather those responsibilities into one arrangement.
A film producer walks into a vending business
Jensen came to the problem by an unusually indirect route. His early career included securities brokerage, primarily at Smith Barney, Harris Upham. He later ran International Film Productions and worked on television projects including the 1983 public-television special A Tribute to Princess Grace. His professional life was already moving between money and storytelling.
Then came American Film Technologies, which he founded in 1985 and led until 1992. Its business was film colorization. Old pictures could be given a different appearance for television audiences. Ted Turner became a customer. Before Jensen asked operators to reconsider the familiar vending machine, he had been involved in a business asking viewers to reconsider familiar films.
He received the Philadelphia-area Entrepreneur of the Year award in the high-technology category in 1989. His education included a Bachelor of Science from the University of Tennessee and the Advanced Management Program at Wharton. Those credentials accompanied a career that refused to stay within a single industry’s job descriptions.
There was a practical continuity beneath the variety: existing things, new technical possibilities, another commercial life. Film libraries and vending machines made for different conversations, but neither required starting with an empty world. USA Technologies would work with equipment already installed in places where people already bought things.
Ten minutes at the machine door
In 2009, Jensen described installing the EDGE as a short job: remove a small plate, insert the device and connect the power. The reader and payment application shared a single piece of hardware. He put installation time at ten minutes. It was a sales argument expressed in the language of somebody who had other machines to visit.
He also had an answer for the unhappy customer whose purchase failed to appear. Card users could call for a refund. The old ritual of feeding a machine money and hoping it behaved was acquiring a customer-service department. The snack might remain stubbornly behind glass; recovering the payment could become less theatrical.
The ePort EDGE received the National Automatic Merchandising Association’s innovation award in 2010. Its design supported faster processing, simultaneous tasks and updates delivered over the air. An update that did not require a technician to visit the machine saved a journey. Multiply that small convenience across a dispersed operation and the engineering becomes easier to appreciate.
Stephen P. Herbert, then president and chief operating officer, helped articulate that service approach. Jensen was the founder and public salesman; the product and network were the work of a larger organization. His interviews could be expansive, but the practical appeal kept returning to fewer moving parts for the customer.
Small purchases, repeated
By the end of December 2010, USA Technologies reported approximately 109,000 connected devices, up from 63,000 a year earlier. During the quarter, it processed 15.9 million cashless transactions totaling $26.2 million. The numbers were becoming substantial through repetition. No individual vending purchase needed to be remarkable.
Quarterly revenue reached $6 million. Recurring license and transaction fees accounted for $3.8 million. The business earned money from continuing use as well as equipment sales, giving the company a reason to care what happened after installation. It also reported its first positive EBITDA quarter since its Nasdaq listing, a milestone distinct from bottom-line profitability.
“We kept everything real simple”
George R. Jensen Jr., February 2011
In a February 2011 interview, Jensen described the financial plumbing: hardware and activation at the beginning, then a monthly service charge and card-processing fees. Customer proceeds were transferred weekly after the company deducted its fees. The reader on the door was the visible end of a continuing payment relationship.
JumpStart addressed another constraint. During calendar 2010, roughly 71% of approximately 46,000 new connections came through that program. In March 2011, the company announced an agreement to raise $10.7 million, primarily to support its expansion. Helping operators avoid an initial hardware bill required capital on the supplier’s side. Convenience still had to be paid for somewhere.
The interruption in 2011
Jensen’s tenure ended on October 14, 2011, when he resigned as chairman, chief executive and director. The company said an investigation had identified approximately 450 Yahoo message-board comments, mostly under the alias “investor.texas,” over roughly two months. It said he acknowledged the postings and that the board considered them inappropriate.
The company also said investigators found no evidence that other executives or employees had participated or known about the activity. It stated that the postings had no effect on its historical financial results or audited statements. Herbert took the interim chairman and chief executive positions. The founder’s departure was a sharp break in a business that continued operating.
By December, Jensen had joined the board of ThePeoplesVote.com, with a remit covering strategy and expansion, and an intention to invest. He was then leading Jensen Expansion Capital, advising emerging companies on capital and board recruitment. His next work drew on the company-building experience he had accumulated.
A different kind of explanation
The company he founded publicly launched its Cantaloupe name in April 2021. In May 2026, 365 Retail Markets announced the completion of its acquisition of Cantaloupe. The transaction had an approximately $848 million equity value. These were later chapters under other leaders, extending well beyond Jensen’s time in charge.
His own recent work returned to a subject with a much earlier place in his life. He had worked on NBC’s twelve-hour A.D. television miniseries in 1985. In July 2026, he announced The New Testament Explained: King James Version, a two-volume commentary pairing the biblical text with explanations chapter by chapter.
His stated aim was to help readers understand the New Testament while retaining the language of the King James Version. The books include introductions, commentary, key insights and concluding summaries. The proposed audience runs from individual readers to study groups and teachers. Explanation has become the product itself.
The scale has changed again: a film, a network, a page. Each asks something different of its audience. Jensen’s vending years remain especially revealing because the test was so unsentimental. A customer wanted a drink. An operator wanted the numbers to work. After all the presentations, the hardware still had to fit the door, and the price still had to fit the business.