Patent ID: 8596529

Claim:
A payment module operationally related to a vending machine controller for effectuating a cashless vend, said payment module comprising: a microcontroller; an interactive interface interconnected with said microcontroller to interface said payment module to a computing platform and to communicate data between the microcontroller and the computing platform; a vending equipment interface interconnected with said microcontroller to interconnect said payment module to said vending machine controller by way of at least a vending bus interface; and a microcontroller readable medium encoded with an executable program code for execution by the microcontroller, said executable program code comprising instructions to: a) monitor the status of said vending machine controller, b) form a transaction record representative of said cashless vend, said transaction record includes at least vending bus data, c) implement data fields in a memory for at least the vending bus data, d) update at least one of the data fields responsive to data received from the computing platform via the interactive interface, e) communicate to the vending machine controller via the vending equipment interface the update of the at least one of the data fields responsive to data received from the computing platform, f) communicate via the interactive interface to the computing platform said data fields responsive to the data fields changing, and g) selectively control said cashless vend.