Executive Protocol or MDB?

When we purchase a machine, the supplier allows us to select between working with Executive and MDB protocols but…

Do we really know which protocol suits us?

How does the Executive Protocol work?

It was developed by MARS in the early 1980s and is based on a Master-Slave protocol, where the wallet is the Master and the machine is the Slave.

The accounting data is shared between the machine and the wallet!! In the machine, sales are by channel and in the coin-operated system, everything related to the financial part, money in tubes, money in piggy banks, etc.

The ideal option is to work with ‘Price Holding’, where we assign each machine channel a price line from the wallet and thus we can capture the accounting from the wallet.

Executive Machine set to Price Holding – Reading Sales Data

We can also work in ‘Cross by Price’, assigning all channels with the same price to a single wallet line. This option is not recommended since we lose control of sales by channel.

The original protocol did not allow the connection of peripherals, although later revisions included cash-less systems and currently the alignment of prices with the price displays located on the trays of the machines.

To incorporate a wallet or any MDB device, we need an executive wallet that includes an MDB Slave port.

MDB Protocol

It was developed in the 1990s by Coinco for Coca-Cola.

In MDB, all the potential is in the machine’s CPU, which will allow us to use wallets with lower performance and ultimately lower prices.

MDB Machine – Reading Sales Data

The machine becomes a Master that controls multiple MDB peripherals; coin-operated, bill-operated, cashless, credit card, audit devices, etc.

This is a protocol in constant evolution; both EVA and NAMA have a committee in charge of its review and evolution. The latest modifications are from 2019.

MDB or Executive?

Although the trend should be to change our payment systems to MDB, we have to know the pros and cons of each of the two protocols.

The ideal decision will be conditioned by the management of the Audit as well as the connection of the different peripherals.

Comparison between MDB and Executive protocols

Joan Gispert

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