3 areas of technology making life convenient

The use of technology in forecourt retail makes life convenient for customers and rewards retailers with a plethora of business benefits, from legal compliance to managing stock. Here, MADIC UK looks at three areas of technology for fuel retailers and their benefits.

Facial Age Estimation

Ensuring compliance with age restricted product sales presents significant challenges for retailers. With a broad range of products including alcohol, tobacco, lottery tickets and vaping items popular with younger customers. Enforcing age related sales policy is one of the top triggers for aggression towards staff (ACS Crime Report 2025), slows down service and requires proof of compliance.

AI machine vision technologies, such as MyCheckr, provide innovative biometric solutions designed to simplify and enhance business’ age estimation process. With inbuilt cameras and light indicators, to clearly show the server and customer if a manual ID check is required. This process takes the ‘personal judgement’ out of the transaction, making it less stressful for staff and reducing the potential abuse when challenging customers for ID.

With age estimation technology in place, retailers can demonstrate to authorities they proactively uphold age-verification laws or retail strategies, such as Challenge 25. And yes, biometric AI age estimation is highly accurate and outperforms humans across all age ranges!

Transactions are faster and smoother using AI based age estimation technology, especially when integrated to the EPOS or self-checkout. At MADIC UK, we’ve integrated our evoPOS and evoSelfCheckout with MyCheckr and Fujitsu’s facial age estimation devices, to provide a frictionless restricted sales customer journey. Reducing the staff burden at self-checkout kiosks, where manual age verification requires an assistant being called to the kiosk for every person purchasing any age restricted item.

Stock replenishment

As part of an intelligent EPOS solution, AI-driven automated processes, such as stock replenishment, enables retailers to prevent overstocking or stockouts and keeps shelves stocked with the right products. Whilst time and labour saved on laborious manual ordering can be redeployed. According to a McKinsey report, businesses that adopt AI automation can improve efficiency by over 40%.

In evoBackOffice, stock replenishment can be AI-automated, or manual. The former learns from your sales patterns, monitors stock levels and creates the order, allowing the retailer to have the final say on placing the order. Retailers can choose the amount of sales history used and whether to exclude reductions and recent promotions in the algorithm. Product ‘tags’ allow retailers to group items to auto-order at a granular level, rather than have to auto-order whole departments or sub-departments. Other features, such as AI-automated customisable dashboard stock alerts, also help optimise stock levels.

AI-driven automation is becoming more widely adopted by independent retailers, not just major supermarket chains. Utilising collected sales data, as well as external factors such as the weather, public holidays and local events.

Customer journeys

Over a third of forecourts in the UK use our products and services and our evolution EPOS technology is deployed across Europe - so we know about customer journeys and expectations in a digital world.

A key expectation in our fast-paced environment is convenience - one of the seven Cs for good customer service, and that includes convenient ways to pay.

In-store traditional cashier payment still accounts for the vast number of transactions in the UK. However, the number of self-service checkouts at forecourts is increasing, up 6% in 2024 compared to 2023. We saw a significant increase in self-checkout take-up in 2024, with chains such as Asda Express installing evoSelfCheckout. A less obvious benefit, than queue management, is uplift in other areas of the business. One of our independent forecourt retailers reported doubling their hot food sales because they were able to reutilise staff to manage the hot food counter more effectively.

Looking out to the forecourt, pay-at-pump on mobile apps such as BPme, ShellGo+ and Esso, all of which we link to, offer convenience for customers who want to pay for fuel directly from their phones, and manage loyalty programmes.

However, apps aren’t for everyone, and a key enabler for 24/7 fuel service is outdoor payment terminals (OPTs). With forecourts benefitting from pre-authorisation - avoiding drive-offs, using the OPT as a point of interaction with the customer and digital media.

Our recent launch and pilot programme of MADIC’s MAGPAY 101 unattended payment terminal in the UK has been successful, and interest from major oil companies reflects the desire to adopt OPTs more widely. With 25 000 outdoor payment terminals already installed across mainland Europe by MADIC group, we’re ready go to market in the UK.

Beyond the forecourt, hybrid retail is an innovative model that's designed to offer customers even more convenience - with a combination of traditional brick & mortar retail and e-commerce. Our evolution EPOS software enables hybrid retail through integrations with specialised delivery & click and collect platforms such as Deliverect; allowing forecourt retailers to easily offer delivery from multiple channels such as Uber Eats, Just Eat and Deliveroo.

Technology and EPOS systems were in the top four areas of investment for UK forecourts in 2024, reflecting how key they are for customer service and driving business benefits.

Learn more with MADIC UK!