If your building’s laundry still takes coins, there’s a fair chance nobody ever chose that. It came with the machines, and the machines came with whoever installed them, and that was probably a while ago now.
For most buildings, cashless is the stronger choice. Coins are familiar, and they’re cheap to install if you’re buying the machines yourself. But cashless removes the two things that cause the most grief in a shared laundry: jammed coin mechanisms, and cash sitting inside the machines waiting for someone to come and get it.
Here’s how the two compare on maintenance, security, resident experience, and what each one actually costs your owners corporation.
Most buildings never chose coin they inherited it
Every time we’ve replaced another operator’s equipment, we’ve taken out cash-only machines. Not once has a committee sat down and decided coins were the right call. They simply had what the last operator left behind, and nobody realised changing it was an option.
That matters, because the usual argument for coin is the install cost and that argument only holds if the building is buying the machines. With a no-cost route operator, the building pays nothing upfront either way. The cheaper option isn’t cheaper. It’s just older.
What coins actually cost you
In our experience, coin faults are one of the most common reasons a machine goes out of service, and they’re entirely avoidable. A bent coin, a foreign coin, a full coin box, or a bit of lint in the chute any of them will stop a machine. Every coin mechanism is a maintenance call waiting to happen, and every jam is a machine out of order plus a resident who wants their money back.
Then there’s the cash itself. Someone has to collect it, count it, and bank it. In every building. On a schedule. Forever.
A machine full of coins is also a target, and the real cost of a break-in is rarely the coins. It’s the damage to the machine, the door, and the room that someone forced their way into.
How cashless works in practice
A resident walks in, taps a card or phone, selects wash or dry, and that’s the transaction. No app to download, no account to create, no card to top up at a kiosk that’s out of order.
Two things change the moment the coins come out. The coin fault disappears, which takes a whole category of breakdown off the board. And the cash disappears, which means no float to manage, no collection runs, and nothing sitting in the laundry overnight worth breaking a door for.
Cashless also doesn’t force anyone onto a smartphone a point worth making at a committee meeting, because it’s usually assumed otherwise. The reader takes an ordinary debit or credit card with a tap. A resident who has never used Apple Pay in their life can still pay in about a second.
“Our older residents will struggle with it”
This is the objection that comes up at nearly every committee meeting, and it’s raised in good faith. So here’s our honest answer:
We have never received a complaint about removing the option to pay with cash. Not one, across every building we’ve converted.
Part of that is because tapping a card is genuinely easier than digging through a purse for the right coins. But it’s also because cash has already left this part of everyday life. Cash hasn’t vanished from the economy the Reserve Bank’s 2025 Consumer Payments Survey found it still accounts for around 15 per cent of all payments, and about half of Australians used cash in a typical week. Where it has gone is small purchases. Only around one in four payments under $10 are now made with cash, down from almost all of them in 2007.
A wash cycle sits right in that band. For most residents, a coin slot isn’t familiar anymore. It’s friction before they’ve even started a load.
What if the laundry is in a basement with no reception?
Reasonable question, and the one genuine advantage coin machines have: they work entirely offline.
As standard, our card readers run on their own independent SIM, so they don’t depend on building Wi-Fi or a resident’s phone signal. For new builds and laundry refurbishments, we can hardwire the readers with an Ethernet connection instead, which is more reliable again and it’s what we’d recommend for a basement room or anywhere reception is patchy.
So it’s worth asking any operator how their readers stay connected. It’s a fair question, and there should be a straight answer.
The price on the machine is the price you pay
Card payments carry a small processing fee, and some operators pass it to the resident as a surcharge on top of the vend price. We don’t.
Whatever we quote is what a resident is charged. If a wash is $5.20, they pay $5.20. The processing fee is already in it. Nothing is added at the reader, and nobody gets a surprise on their statement.
Ask any operator to confirm this in writing before you sign. It’s a small detail that residents notice immediately.
What it all means for your owners corporation
For the committee, the payment method isn’t really the point. What matters is what each option creates afterwards, month after month:
- Maintenance: cashless removes an entire category of fault, so fewer breakdowns and fewer call-outs.
- Security: no cash on site means no collection, no counting, and nothing worth forcing a door for.
- Admin: no coin floats to manage, and refunds handled by the operator instead of the committee.
- Resident satisfaction: less friction at the machine, so fewer complaints reach the committee in the first place.
How Nina’s Laundrette handles it
Every machine we install comes with a card reader fitted as standard. Residents tap a card or phone, choose wash or dry, and go.
If something goes wrong, there’s a QR code on every machine. A resident scans it and reaches us directly for a fault, a refund, or a question about how the machine works. It doesn’t go to the building manager, and it doesn’t turn up as an agenda item at your next meeting. That’s our job, not yours.
There’s no cash to collect, count, or bank, and nothing in the room worth breaking in for.