October is upon us. The NRCC is next week. There will be a mad rush to Thanksgiving and then the countdown to Christmas. This is definitely the right time to get a state of the business update published as Q4 also kicks off our busy wash season in Ohio.
2024/2025 Improvements
2025 has been an incredible year so far for updates. A recap of the strategy we outlined earlier is also probably in order. Last year, we identified power related challenges and network connectivity as the two primary impacts to site performance. We addressed most of the power related issues through hardware upgrades you can read about <here>. In 2025, we spent nearly half the year optimizing our application services with the design philosophy of running over inconsistent network connections. This took longer than expected and pushed back some of the product enhancements we had been planning. As of now, all things text marketing and branding, as well as the virtual environment and app updates, are active on the build list. Following these updates, we will complete the core updates previously outlined.
With respect to the application service code updates that were developed, here is what it means in the practical operator view sense. If you experienced, or still experience these scenarios, we have updates that can mitigate the impact.
- Credit card reader stuck on “Welcome” - the nature of credit card processing has dramatically shifted over the past 10 years and today’s processing is a fully hardware encrypted transaction running over the Internet. Sometimes the application running this process would lose connection and not recover without a reboot. You have most likely seen this at Walmart or McDonalds as well as this is a cross-industry payments type of experience. To address this on our pay stations, an automated soft recovery process has been added to the new code base.
- The I/O device would lose communication and not be able to signal a wash - frequently caused by power variations, but also environmental interference, the Sealevel I/O device would drop offline and be unable to signal a wash. A reboot would solve this problem as it reestablished communication. To alleviate this, an automated soft recovery process has been added to the new code base.
- Payments queue up and post to the Customer Management Portal (CMP) back-to-back - this was caused by the payment service “taking a hit” and when it recovered (it could be hours later), all the queued up payments would post to the CMP at the same time and none of them would have driver or LPR pictures. An automated soft recovery process has been added to the new code base that posts each transaction immediately.
- Talos Cash Recyclers had limited visibility and control and occasionally dropped offline - we are just about ready to publish the enhanced control and visibility update as well as an automated soft recovery process. (currently in testing)
- When someone selected a wash, the screen would advance, but the detailed selection options would not load. The display had a background, but the options did not load on the display. A reboot would solve this. This was caused by a momentary disruption in the API connection most likely related to network and/or service connections. An automated screen refresh process has been added to the new code base to address this issue..
So why didn’t we just design the code to begin with this way? Good or bad, we didn’t experience these issues at our United Auto Wash locations, and it took growing to a large scale to see these impacts. At present, a small percentage of our user base has been impacted by some or all of these. We know reliability is extremely important for our entire user base and that is why we have taken the time over the past 6 months to harden this environment. As a note for expectation setting, not every existing computer controller can accept these updates, so a controller upgrade and/or credit card reader purchase may be required to implement these service improvements at your site(s).
Hardware & Software Separation
From a new product perspective, we have been working on further separating hardware from software in an effort to more closely integrate with the hardware every customer already has in their hand: their cell phone. The first move in this space was the release of the Virtual Pay Station (VPS) earlier this year. In addition, we introduced the Mobile Wallet Kiosk as part of this virtual lineup. In the near future, we will be adding a QR Pay Station (more to come on this later in this update). After the launch of the physical card reader associated with this virtual environment, the OEM released its next version device. We have been working through backorders but are finally coming out of that situation. A stable supply chain is on the horizon. In Q4, we will begin the next phase of the VPS development with a host of new features like count up and new reporting options. All of the planned updates are outlined at the bottom of this link: https://www.dencartechnology.com/shop/virtual-pay-station-2043?tags=26&order=list_price+desc
Text Messaging
One impact to all of us this year was that AT&T, Verizon, Apple, and Google all decided to change their policies with text messaging. We have all experienced text spamming and one of the good things is these big boys decided to do something about it. This is a great consumer benefit. However, when running a business that is heavily dependent on texting, it would have been nice to know things a little bit sooner. As you know by now, the carriers and cell phone providers are heavily filtering text messages. The Dencar platform had to adapt and we quickly pivoted to bring the Carwash Communicator Branded Texting solution to market. We had a few bumps in the road, but now have the process pretty well documented. Customer implementations have been occurring for the past 5 months and Branded Texting is part of the standard onboarding process now. In addition, as you have probably seen on your own devices, iPhone/Android have been adding additional filtering where unknown texts are going to a filtered text folder. We are adding additional capabilities to the Carwash Communicator platform to ensure wash pass purchase confirmations are being received by your customers. Two of the upgrades we are currently working on include adding support for an iMessage-like platform functioning across iPhones and Android phones as well as a new Branded Calling capability. Customers will be able to receive order confirmation phone calls after a wash membership purchase alerting them to the text that might be in their unknown texts folder once the upgrade finishes. In addition, we are currently adding Branded Text Receipts (regular text receipts fell victim to the same blocking) as well as Branded Payment Updating. If you are hosting your website with Carwash Communicator, the CWC team will get this set up for you on the backend when it becomes available. If you are hosting elsewhere, there will be some additional steps once this capability is available.
Text Marketing
Speaking of texting, the pivot to deploy Branded Texting delayed our planned Text Marketing Automation release, but that is now squarely on the build tract. A couple simple automations include account registration reminders as well as a 4 week customizable introductory messaging plan. Of significant note is the “Retail Acquisition Automation” build. This automation will let you construct a text marketing list in a similar fashion as what an OptSpot service would provide at measurably less cost. The significant benefit to doing this action from within the Dencar platform is that the entire process is automated from cell phone number collection to fulfillment of the registration promo. The automation includes configurable settings in the CMP so your promo page website will automatically build. We are personally very excited to start using this at United Auto Wash and will share results once we have them. Worth noting, these enhancements will be delivered following FCC and carrier guidelines, and will put us all in a much better position to ensure our customers see the messages sent from our car washes.
New Product Releases
At the NRCC we will be launching two new products. The first is the ECO-13 pay station. The ECO-10 was a great start, and the ECO-13 is an exceptional enhancement. As the name implies, we upgraded the screen from 10” to 13”. In addition, the entire enclosure was fortified with heavy gauge stainless steel (yes, it costs a little more). The HVAC has been relocated to the base with an exterior mount. Everything in this unit was designed for maximum serviceability. When you see the inside, you will be pleased. The simplicity of wiring and component placement is now second to none. We can’t wait to show you some pictures and videos from the show. Stay tuned.
While not necessarily a new product, we have seen changes in car wash equipment signaling and have added dedicated vehicle positioning monitoring to our bill of materials. This is allowing for a far more reliable experience with signaling.
In addition to these noted updates, we have totally revamped our retrofit/replacement line of pay stations. When it comes down to it, the 5” combination monitor and credit card reader functioning as a full pay station is just too small to fully engage your customers when they are sitting in a car. We had always envisioned a full separate touch screen experience for the retrofit lineup, but historical problems with touchscreen performance hampered our efforts. Fortunately, we didn’t give up. In 2024, we heat tested new high temperature optically bonded monitors in a greenhouse test box and didn’t observe blackouts until a very high surface temperature. This was a great sign and led us to a new design of replacement pay stations for Hamilton, Unitec, Exacta, and Standard Changer units that are currently enclosed in brick surrounds. No one wants to tear down their brick or stone work, and now you don’t have to compromise on a pay station solution to be able to keep your existing enclosures. The new replacement pay stations are the same size as the original manufacturer units so they are designed for a slide-in installation. And they all can come with a beautiful 13” high definition heat tested monitor. Our beta unit was installed in Savannah, Georgia and performed flawlessly in direct sunlight throughout the month of August. This field test gave us the confidence to say we nailed it this third time around.
Note: for any customer that purchased the retrofit door with the combination 5” monitor card reader, we have put together a very special offer for you to upgrade your unit to this replacement pay station design. It’s basically the cost of metal and shipping. Please talk to Chris Zuchegno for the details.
Training
Also, in our new office space, we have plenty of room for training. We are now providing live face-to-face training for distributors, installers, and operators at no cost. This training equips every installer to complete an installation and turn-up process without any involvement from Dencar. We also offer this training online so travel is not required. This training is now part of every project delivery. Please contact Sam Phillips for more information and scheduling.
Finishing Out 2025
To recap our development efforts for the remainder of this year, we are working on finishing up the services hardening and ensuring we can deploy those updates as needed. Reliability is paramount. We are updating the capabilities for all things “Branded Communication” from Text Receipts through Text Marketing Automation and adding some social marketing and Google Review management capabilities as well. As we complete these updates, we will move into the phase 3 of the virtualization environment to expand the Denpay capabilities across more device types. This will include the testing and certification of the Overpass integration. Completing these build items will be foundational for the 2026 initiatives we will highlight below.
"Cost Effective Marketing"
Before we jump to 2026, let me touch on a recurring theme we have seen from our Wednesday Q&A training sessions: the desire for “cost effective” marketing support is high from our operator base. We have heard you and are building out additional services and training specifically geared towards this area of our car wash business. As with most of our platform, we are building the tools to permit a “do it yourself” approach and are overlaying optional enhanced service and content support from the Carwash Communicator team. In this case, we are adding a new service module called Social Media & Google Review management. The Coming Soon page is here: https://carwashcommunicator.com/social-media-management/
The goal is simple: give the independent car wash operator the same tools that large tunnel chains use at a fraction of the cost. If you feel like you have been out marketed by your larger competitors and their $100,000+ marketing department, this will provide an opportunity to help level the playing field in an extremely cost effective manner. We have been piloting the Google Review Management portion with United Auto Wash and picked up 100+ 4-star & 5-star reviews in under a month. The platform works! We have some integration to finalize for full automation which is why we still show this module as coming soon, and this is currently underway. Shara Gray leads our Carwash Communicator operations and will be at the NRCC. You can demo the Google Review process live from your phone. Come say hello and see if this makes sense for you.
2026 Planning
What’s in store for 2026? Well, a lot more! To begin, let us ask and answer a simple question. What business is Dencar in? Most would answer we are a manufacturing company for point of sale hardware for the car wash industry. However, if we have that view of ourselves, we would miss the largest technology trend of our lifetime. Our answer to this question is that Dencar is in the business of car wash membership sales and car wash equipment activation. You might ask, “what’s the difference”? And we will answer with a short history snippet. In 1975, there was a company that developed the first digital camera. Talk about pervasive technology. I bet nearly everyone of you have read at least part of this business update on a device that has a digital camera embedded or attached to it. Can you imagine the patent royalty and technology distribution this company must have received for developing the technology that shapes our lives today? Just think how many pictures are shared every second around the world across every possible platform. If you hadn’t heard this story before, the company that invented the digital camera was Kodak. And unfortunately for Kodak, their leadership team decided that if they developed the digital camera further, that would cannibalize their film sales business. Ask your kids what Kodak is. If they are like mine, they don’t even know the name.
Why did we add this story? Simply put, we are not going to have a Kodak moment. The future of point of sale belongs to those that closely integrate to the most powerful device that every customer carries with them every day: the cellphone. That means we fully intend to bring to market solutions like QR Pay Stations in 2026. In the Dencar product offering, a QR Pay Station is the next generation offering of a Mobile Wallet Kiosk. The QR Pay Station will do everything that a regular pay station can do at a fraction of the cost. There are two models in which we will be delivering the QR Pay Station. Option 1 is statically and could be displayed with an elaborate 3D printed QR code with color/logo embedded. You’ll be able to use your imagination. Option 2 is a QR delivered electronically on a display so that there can be two-way communication with the customer. For example, if a member comes into the wash at an unattended bay or lane, and their payment recently failed, the electronic interface could prompt the customer to update their payment method.
There are two specific use cases we currently envision...possibly more.
We don’t think the world is ready to move to an entire mobile experience (yet), so use case 1 is for redundancy. If you have a pay station (from Dencar or any other point of sale provider), you will be able to place a Dencar QR Pay Station code next to the pay station and signal your wash completely independent of the kiosk. This is an incredibly powerful solution to add near full redundancy to your point of sale environment at a fraction of the cost of a physical pay station while still fully supporting memberships and Dencar’s VIA Guard technology.
Use case 2 is for multi-lane tunnels. Imagine a 3 lane tunnel with lane 1 being the primary retail or full service lane. You would place a physical pay station in this lane that can control EZ-Pass member access for all 3 lanes. For lanes 2 and 3, a QR pay station will suffice. In addition, any operator that desires it can add Handheld Pay Stations to any lane and service your customers with the Chick-fil-A model during the time of day that this makes sense. The beauty of the Dencar design is that all 3 payment/redemption models work simultaneously on any lane with the ability to feed the Visual Queue Lane Manager (gate control). If your normal business model is to run attended with Handheld Pay Stations, and your employee(s) doesn’t show up for work, the QR Pay Station lets you run unattended.
Why does this matter? The answer is simple: PRICE! Kodak didn’t develop the digital camera because they knew that would mean less film sales. Dencar will develop the QR Pay Station fully and we realize this means less pay station sales. I expect this type of design will provide a $100,000+ savings to tunnel operators in terms of capital purchases compared to traditional designs. That is a massive difference in approach. If you would like to see what we are working on, here is a skunkworks type of video showing the examples: https://youtube.com/shorts/s12sBQk_8w8 The key point of this video is that it doesn't matter what activation/sales method you use, every option feeds the queue and the options can be used interchangeably and simultaneously.
OK, that’s it for now. We still have a lot to do this year and before Q4 gets too busy, we wanted to get this update published. If anything in here piques your interest, come see us at the NRCC and let’s talk carwash!
If you can’t make it to the show, give us a call:
Dencar Sales: 330-595-2022 x3
Carwash Communicator Sales: 302-289-6450