Merchant-Paid Award

A merchant-paid award is a reward in which the machine identifies a winner but pays nothing itself. The award is handed over at the location — by the merchant, operator or storekeeper on whose counter the game stands — so the payment happens across the counter rather than through a coin hopper.^[1] What the machine supplies is the verdict: a score, a lit winning number, a marquee naming what that score is worth.

The arrangement was the trade’s answer to territory where a payout machine was illegal. A game that dispensed no coins was not a payout machine in the eyes of the law, yet the operator could still offer the pull of winnings. Bally sold its non-payout Harvest Moon on exactly that promise, offering operators “a crack at ‘payout profits’ in NON-PAYOUT TERRITORY”.^[2]

The award was often credit at the counter rather than cash. Score cards mounted on the backbox told the player how much money “in trade” a given score returned,^[3] and some were printed on both sides so one game could be presented as a trade-award machine or an amusement-only one as local conditions demanded.^[4] Other makers put the goods in front of the player instead of naming a sum, displaying the prizes themselves beneath the playfield glass.^[5]

The mode outlasted the pre-war payout bans it was built for. Keeney was still building it into machines in the 1960s, where a player who chose to cash out was paid by the location at a dime a point.^[6]