Skip to content

Can Smart Safes Really Save You Money?

Store owners are discovering that managing cash isn't getting any cheaper. Even though interest rates are starting to drop, banks keep charging hidden fees that cut into profits.

Most banks hit retailers with a charge of about 25 cents for every $100 deposited over $5,000. For many stores, this adds up to more than $300 every month. But that's not all—banks also charge extra fees for getting coins and cash, depositing checks, and processing transactions. These costs make handling cash a major expense for retail businesses.

For convenience store owners trying to keep costs down, finding ways to reduce or eliminate these fees is essential. Is switching to a smart safe the answer to saving money on your retail cash management?

What Standard Smart Safes Actually Do For You?

When you're thinking about getting a smart safe for your convenience store, you should know that basic models are better at saving time and improving safety than cutting costs. These systems help by making it faster to prepare deposits, reducing trips to the bank, and keeping better track of your daily cash. While these benefits matter, they might not directly save you money.

Perhaps more frustrating, where you might have been paying an employee or manager to make cash drops before, smart safes almost exclusively use an armored truck service. Most retailers pay around $280 per month just for cash pickup. Some companies include this in their smart safe service fee. But, even if your smart safe partner includes armored carrier, you’re still on the hook for the cost of cash delivery, security fees, and other charges.

The Truth About Next-Day Deposits

One of the biggest appeals of smart safes is their “next-day deposit” feature, where what you deposit into the smart safe is credited to your business’s account the next day.

What many store owners don't realize is that "next-day deposit" comes with an additional price tag. When companies offer to put money in your account while the cash is still in your store, they're actually giving you something called provisional credit. The fees for this service are tied to interest rates. Some provisional credit rates were recently running as high as 9-12%. Most retailers end up paying about $312 monthly for this service.


Wait! There ARE Retail Cash Solutions that SAVE MONEY!

Before you decide that automated cash systems aren't worth it, there's something you should know about newer solutions like BANK IN A BOX. This technology changes how stores handle cash by fixing some of the most expensive parts of cash management – such as currency orders and delivery.

The differentiator is cash recycling. Instead of letting cash sit in a safe, BANK IN A BOX reuses your in-store cash to refill your registers. This means you don't have to order as much cash from the bank—or maybe none at all.

You can save even more money by bundling your store's cash handling with your ATM’s cash management. As an all-in-one solution, BANK IN A BOX automatically combines these two systems, reducing the cost of armored carrier by limiting the number of times they need to visit the store. But the real money-saver is how these systems cut down on provisional credit fees by leveraging your store’s ATM transaction volumes.

For example, with regular smart safes, you pay fees on all the money you put into the safe for deposit. So, if you deposit $5,000, you pay provisional credit on the whole amount.

But with BANK IN A BOX, you can get credited for money dispensed out to your ATM users. So, if you deposit $5,000 but customers withdraw $3,000 from your ATM, you only pay fees on the remaining $2,000. That's a big difference in your monthly costs!

Cutting Your Cash Handling Costs

For convenience store owners looking to spend less on cash management, choosing the right system makes all the difference. While basic smart safes help with security and efficiency, your store needs a cash recycling system like BANK IN A BOX to reduce your costs.

By using advanced systems that combine smart safes with cash recycling and ATM features, store owners can enjoy the time savings and added security they expect from smart safes while spending less money. The key is picking a solution that doesn't just make cash handling easier, but also helps cut down those expensive bank fees.

TL;DR - Smart safes save more in time and security than they do in cost. In fact, you might be paying MORE. But you don't have to be - with BANK IN A BOX.