The Romanian government provides the first technical and functional details of the vending machines that require connection to fiscal electronic cash registers

The Government of Romania has published a Decision for the modification and completion of the Methodological Norms for the application of the Government's Emergency Ordinance No. 28/1999 regarding the obligation of economic operators to use "electronic fiscal marking machines" (meaning electronic fiscal devices). In the said decision, the provisions take into account, among others, the fiscal electronic cash registers integrated in unattended equipment of the type of commercial vending machines operating on the basis of card payments as well as banknote or coin acceptors. Fiscal electronic cash registers integrated in unattended equipment of the type of vending machines that are submitted for authorization to the Commission must meet certain conditions, taking into account the specific technical characteristics of these devices.

The mentioned act mainly aims to regulate the following, among other aspects of this type of equipment: it established the configuration, as well as the technical and functional characteristics, of the fiscal electronic cash registers integrated in unattended equipment of the type of commercial vending machines operating on the basis of card payments, as well as of banknote or coin acceptors, as the case may be, for their testing and approval by the National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics (ICI Bucharest).

These devices are identifiable as a physical structure and application program, according to those requirements; they include a (tax) card containing a fiscal module controlled by a control program, whereas constructive embedding of the printing device and customer and operator displays are not indicated to be mandatory.

Based on the mentioned regulation, such devices are to have interfaces that ensure:

- collaboration with the control unit of the unattended vending machine in which it is embedded

- control of the connections of the payment peripherals attached to it,

- collaboration with a computer-type computer system or a smart phone, tablet-type device, or the like, which have an identifiable application program (POS application) that allows the modification, programming, execution of orders from the reporting regime, completion and reading of the fiscal module's database, and execution of service operations via a limited set of commands.