Two recommendations - first, manufacturers of bill acceptance devices need to optimize their Firmware Upgrade process, while I realize not everything can be OTA (Over the air), no bill acceptance device manufacturer, can, with a straight face, make the claim that they didn't know that there would be new currency formats coming out.
Second, they should separate the core functionality of their devices (Scanning, pulling in the bills) from the identification process (Which Bill is this?) - LUA is a pretty traditional implementation language to do this.
Funny you should mention OTA I was speaking with a vendor just last Monday after some testing and he said there are plans to have our central system be able to push new firmware directly to the device, no humans involved. It's still in development from what I could tell more OAW (over-a-wire) than OTA. But as I said a lot of devices are old with limited memory and a lot still use EPROMs for storage rather than flash so the EPROM has to be removed to be flashed using a EPROM read/write tool.
But still the Bank of Canada or any bank or institution which makes a country's currency has to give the physical currency to someone to scan and input the data into an application which all takes time.
The vendors are certainly aware of new formats (series) but as I said they can't do anything until the actual bill is in their hands, I don't know the exact process but I know the vendors of the bill acceptance devices have to wait like everyone else. I'm sure a lot of it is due to security, giving some company a $100 bill and risking it being counterfeited.
The vending/casino business is not known to play nice so I don't think LUA or any sort of cooperation would go over well, I'm surprised IGT even allowed SAS to be licensed but I guess money was made.
Second, they should separate the core functionality of their devices (Scanning, pulling in the bills) from the identification process (Which Bill is this?) - LUA is a pretty traditional implementation language to do this.