February is upon us. The SCWA show is next week and we are only 4 weeks from Spring. For United Auto Wash, we are in the thick of prime washing season and this year’s weather has been very supportive. We have doubled-down on Site Level Memberships at United and continued to harden and develop the environment further from Dencar. We hope you will all be able to take advantage of these updates and further enhancements coming soon. Here goes:
What’s New?
Bundles
Can a “bundle” really be new? We have heard from many operators that are just not ready to embrace monthly memberships. Up until this point, we have either tried to convince operators to move into the membership model, or hopefully part ways on friendly terms. Dencar was solely focused on selling memberships and that was our business focus and it wasn’t going to change…until now.
So what prompted the change? Pretty much what drives a lot of change around here. We see an opportunity for United to make more money. We have found that our entrenched retail sales customers have been saturated with the monthly membership messaging and have blocked it out of their minds. Retail washers are great, but we know we are not capturing 100% of their wash spending. We were brainstorming and said, “what if we prompt our retail sales for bundle upgrades at a % savings instead of prompting for a monthly membership?” If we do this, we might be able to lock in nearly 100% of our retail customers’ car washing spend i.e. keep them coming back to us instead of whichever wash they are near when they decide to wash.
Bundles seemed like a good idea, so we got to designing. Then we took it a step further and said, “what if we provide the option of auto-renewing the bundle?”. This seems like a quasi-membership, but is not monthly, and doesn’t lock the customer into a single vehicle and we can exclude the bundle from VIA Guard fraud mitigation. And, we can make the auto-renewal optional. This was seeming more and more like a winner of an idea, so we advanced the development. Since we are already going this far, we added a second option of selling the bundle on the main screen in lieu of the monthly membership. If you’re an operator that is not quite ready for memberships, and want an immediate option for bundle sales, we will have you covered soon.
If we have piqued your interest and you want to find out more about bundle upgrades, auto-renewing or non-renewing bundles, or solely bundles without memberships, come check us out at the SCWA show next week and we will give you a demo. We expect to move this bundle sales option into Production around the middle of this year as a standard configuration. For existing operators, you will need to perform a controller swap to add this capability.
VPS count-up
Our Virtual Pay Station stability, consolidation, and hardening efforts are coming to fruition. We pushed an app update last month and we have updated Site Controller logic nearing release as well. In addition, we are adding individual automated and remote power control to the Site Controller & VPS setup with automated monitoring. The goal is to minimize physical trips to the site for our operators if a reset is required to a VPS unit by adding proactive monitoring and power control. This should maximize service availability and provide a better experience for your customers. i.e. the VPS won’t sit on a white screen after a network interruption.
Feature wise, we know count-up is the top priority. To add the count-up and power control functionality, we are updating the signal relays from 2-output units to 4-output units. If you have a 2-output signal relay today, you’ll need to upgrade that to a 4-output unit to support count-up. 2-output units will continue to be used for countdown on vacuums and other profit centers so they can be repurposed. We are also working on count-up fleet tracking for self-serve on the VPS units. Our intended supported options in the self-serve space include countdown for wash pass redemption and count-up for retail sales. Fleet tracking will be countdown or count-up as desired. We are currently targeting Q2 for this push.
Revive Series
Third time’s a charm. Retro door version 1 and retro door version 2 are end of sale. We have optimized version 3, now called the Revive Series, using a common Dencar components platform based on the Eco-13 model where the entire retrofit pay station is built using the same standard as the Dencar pay station lineup. To make it simple for the operator, we have built the Revive Series units just slightly smaller than existing popular legacy pay station models like the Hamilton ACW/Goldline and the Unitec Wash Select 2. You can simply slide your existing legacy unit out and slide the Dencar Revive Series in its place. A recent conversion for one of our customers swapping out a Hamilton unit only took 3 ½ hours to replace the unit.
The key point to this design is that the Dencar pay station is now using all standard components and the only thing that changes is the size of the metal and display depending on the unit. We have Hamilton ACW/Goldline and Unitec Wash Select 2 units built now and have Exacta and Standard Changer units on the planning board. If you have a bricked-in unit today, and would like to swap it out, let us know what size and shape you need and we can see about making you a unit. In addition, if you are interested in going cashless, all of the Revive Series units will have cashless options at significantly lower pricing.
Site Level Memberships
What started as a vision for the Dencar platform is now being fully realized. With the updates coming from the VPS platform, Site Level Memberships are now ready for prime time. The idea of a site level membership is simple. The technology allows an operator to sell a membership to their location(s) from any profit center. For example, if a customer wants to purchase a self-serve wash, the customer will be prompted to buy a membership to the site, or offered the option of buying a single self-serve activation.
The Site Level Membership technology allows the operator to bundle some or all of their profit center products and services into monthly membership tiers with redemption quantities customizable for each product and tier. For example, a Bronze wash tier might provide for automatic washing, self-serve washing, and vacuuming at quantities of 10, 2, and 30 redemptions per month whereas a Gold wash tier might provide quantities of 15, 5, and 50 and add in mat washing and/or tire air machines as additional products. The key is operators can customize their offering across their entire site and deliver the value they need to compete with attended locations. And operators can sell the membership using Virtual Pay Stations or Mobile Wallet Kiosks.
The advantage is Site Level Memberships are sold via virtual sales agents at every point of sale interface your customer encounters. In the unattended space, operators don’t have sales personnel on site selling memberships to your customers like attended operators have. This Site Level Membership technology helps level the playing field for unattended operators. If you have legacy credit card readers like Cryptopay, Nayax, or Monex/Kiosoft, it’s time to upgrade your site to virtual sales agents selling memberships 24x7.
QR Pay Station
(Keep your Kiosk, formerly Overpass)
We clearly went through a naming conundrum when coming up with this solution and have finally settled on “QR Pay Station” as our go to market release. The premise of the QR Pay Station is simple - provide an ultra low cost pay station that includes VIA Guard fraud mitigation and sales agent technology. The QR Pay Station now fits the bill as either an add-on pay station to your existing equipment or can function as a complete cashless pay station replacement.
As option 1, this means if you have a non-Dencar pay station and want to add the Dencar fraud mitigated membership platform, you can keep your existing pay station and add the Dencar membership solution alongside your existing pay station. As option 2, if you just need a simple cashless pay station, you can install the QR Pay Station as the only pay station. And as option 3, you can add the QR Pay Station for complete redundancy next to an existing Dencar pay station.
Some of you may recall a couple years ago we were working on an auto height adjusting pay station called Right Height. When we saw the capabilities that would exist by integrating the QR Pay Station and Mobile Wallet Kiosk, we stopped the Right Height project. When you can scan a QR code from your low car or high truck and the pay station “replicates” to the phone in your hand, the need for physical adjustment of height is completely eliminated. The QR Pay Station is the combination of a fully integrated mobile web experience (no app required) and dedicated compute and signaling equipment at your car wash. As we expand on the QR Pay Station ecosystem, we expect to bring additional capabilities like the handheld pay station and the Mobile Wallet Kiosk “static version” to life as activation methods for your bays.
Want to learn more on any of these new options? Email Chris Zuchegno chriszuchegno@dencartechnology.com
Did you know?
Network Installation
The network install is becoming less of a question these days because the “why do I need this” question is getting answered more quickly. Most people are seeing the deep integration between point of sale solutions and the Internet. However, old habits die hard so we have some “gotchas” we published about the environment. Read more here
Dencar Customer Support
Putting the “unattended” in unattended car wash - Many of our operators have full time jobs outside of car washing. The idea of taking on customer support for monthly membership customers has been a hurdle to entering the monthly membership space. Years ago, operators could pretty easily support legacy car washes on their lunch breaks when the only option was pressing a button to turn on a wash. Memberships bring an entire suite of customer support issues including: plan questions, plan changes, fraud management, vehicle management, license plate changes, app support, text updates and communication, in addition to all the standard break/fix maintenance items. If you would like to get your time back, let the dedicated team from Carwash Communicator provide you with Dencar Customer Support. Our dedicated and growing team already supports over 50 locations for operators just like you. Read more here
Installation Training
Making installations easier and faster - Learning doesn’t need to be just in time. While we are all familiar with the old adage, “if it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would ever get done,” this is not the approach we advise when installing a pay station. To prevent last minute learning, we have published a formalized onboarding training process for installers. And, we know everyone learns differently and we are trying to accommodate multiple learning styles and timing. Our top desired training process is for you to come visit us for a day and a half and go through hands-on training. This is 1-on-1 with live equipment and live in-the-field training. This is tough to beat. Our second best option is a webinar. We know travel is not always possible, so we have virtualized the training room as well. Either way, a successful installation begins with learning. Please schedule your installation training early in the process. Read more here
Where’s Dencar?
- Come visit us at the Southwest Car Wash Association show February 25-27 in Fort Worth, Texas.
- Come visit us at the Southeast Petro-Food Marketing Expo March 4-5 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
- Come visit us at the International Car Wash Association “The Car Wash Show” May 11-13 in Nashville, Tennessee
- Come visit us at the Northeast Regional Car Wash Convention October 5-7 in Atlantic City, New Jersey
Dencar by the numbers
- 2026 marks 8 years in business for Dencar.
- Dencar processed over 10.2 million transactions in 2025 alone.
- VIA Guard sales agents deliver an average multi-vehicle family plan rate of 38% compared to just 6% with no VIA Guard engagement.
Featured case study
Car Wash Express, Alpharetta, GA - Robert Greene, the owner of Georgia’s Car Wash Express chain, has been in the business since 1998. Known for keen market instincts and staying ahead of trends, he was an early adopter of the membership model, which he brought to his locations nearly 20 years ago. These days, Greene turns to Dencar Technology to help execute his vision for the future. Read more here