Several decades ago, you needed coins to operate most slot machines in live casinos. The coins went away quickly after new technology, called TITO, which is ticket-in, ticket-out, entered the market.

This change has brought back to casinos penny and nickel machines, because with TITO technology, players do not have to carry tons of coins with them and a win doesn’t result in a machine dispensing 500 coins and a player and casino personnel dealing with all this change.

Ticket-in, ticket-out system significantly decreases the operating costs of casinos, including overhead and employee costs. A casino with TITO machines needs fewer employees, which means paying out less money in salaries and fewer payroll taxes. Nobody also has to refill the machines with thousands of pounds of coins, transport coins to and from the casino or change bills into coins for the players.

Another important benefit that TITO technology provides to the casinos is that players can play the machines more often because now there’s no need to feed the coins into the machines. This means that the machines can work more time, which means more income for the casinos.

Typically, a TITO machine accepts both cash bills and electronic tickets. For this reason, there is no need for the slots to have metal bins to catch coins. However, the sound of coins pouring into the bin still has a magic effect on the majority of players, which is why most machines still have it and play the sound when a player wins a jackpot.

The tickets also give more flexibility to the players. For example, if you played four or five spins and didn’t win anything, you can simply press the cash/credit button, cash out by getting a ticket and move on to a different machine or a different game.