Latest / Event Industry News Podcast / Inside Cashless Festivals: Closed‑Loop Payments, Wristbands & Live Data

Transcript

Inside Cashless Festivals: Closed‑Loop Payments, Wristbands & Live Data · Event Industry News Podcast

• 0:00
  The event industry news podcast is sponsored by present communications present provides broadcast quality live hybrid and virtual event production, trusted by organizations where reliability really matters from corporate town halls and conferences to high profile live streams, they design and deliver fully resilient systems that work first time.
• 0:28
  Hello everybody welcome along to the event industry news podcast with me james dixon wishing you all a very good morning afternoon or evening whenever or wherever you tune into today's podcast from i'm going to be talking all things payment and payment technologies today with a guest who's from a company who knows all about this sort of thing having deployed what appears to be in my pre podcast production notes significant success and significant
• 0:57
  development in the infrastructure of payment technologies that are used at events i'm delighted to say that joining the podcast for the first time as a guest is jess gold jess is from we's event just a very good afternoon to you thank you great to be here yeah so as i said
• 1:15
  we're going to be talking about sort of payment technologies cashless payments um that's i
• 1:20
  think all this all the sort of stuff that you guys do but before we get into it tell us a little bit
• 1:25
  about yourself first of all and who and what we's event are and what you guys do within the industry
• 1:32
  so i have a background in event operations so for 15 years have worked alongside festival organizers
• 1:39
  and event founders to find their operational gaps and generally fill them with a technological
• 1:47
  solution the last five years i've worked for we's event and they do ticketing accreditation access
• 1:55
  control and site payment systems so um yeah they they really do do all of the technology that you
• 2:03
  might use on site and for an operational deployment and in the uk we've been around for yeah about five
• 2:11
  six six this years um generally doing more on-site payment systems and access control
• 2:18
  although ticketing is now becoming more and more of what we do as well excellent and i guess my
• 2:24
  first instinct as a response to what you just said there is that it makes sense for all of those
• 2:29
  elements to be delivered by one provider because of the the natural synergy i guess that they all
• 2:36
  have you know we all have the tickets now on our phones anyway we use our phones to make payments
• 2:41
  we're interacting and the devices that we carry in our pocket are so transactional now for any
• 2:46
  number of reasons it makes sense i guess uh off the bat to say that having one company doing all
• 2:51
  those things for a festival would ultimately provide some big operational benefits yeah exactly
• 2:58
  and it's not just operational it's also we see commercial benefits too so more and more we're
• 3:03
  seeing um event organizers utilizing data sets from all kinds of areas pulling them together to
• 3:11
  really understand the customer journey so to have we's event be able to do all of those things um
• 3:17
  yeah just joins up all of those dots nicely rather than having to sort of
• 3:21
  uh work out the data and match it all up later it's already done yeah absolutely one of the
• 3:28
  things we had some really useful notes and and i always get talking points uh in advance of our
• 3:35
  our podcast from our guests and things that we may be able to cover and and chat about and one of the
• 3:40
  things i noticed in the notes for today's uh podcast jess was this development of closed loop
• 3:46
  cashless payment systems and and i for one was had to look up what that actually meant as a term what
• 3:52
  what is closed loop now as soon as i kind of read the definition of it and the explanation
• 3:57
  i instantly thought ah i've actually been in i've actually utilized that as a customer
• 4:03
  i've been at events and in places where that's happened um but for those people who might not
• 4:08
  be aware or familiar with the term explain to us what closed loop are and how that plays a part in
• 4:12
  your business at the moment so closed loops probably even around 10 years um but we see it
• 4:19
  more and more in like the large scale uh european festivals more than we have done in the uk
• 4:25
  and i think it's still sort of an emerging technology for majority of uk festivals
• 4:31
  and so it works by customers topping up uh i don't know respond or a card or something
• 4:38
  and which is then functional offline it's a closed loop so we don't need to contact a bank server
• 4:43
  everything is read and written onto that chip within the site of the event and it's obviously
• 4:49
  very beneficial in the uk where we were on greenfield sites a lot of the time and the internet
• 4:55
  does go down we've had that very recently a large scale event where the internet went for 24 hours
• 5:03
  you know if you're relying on card payments that's a huge chunk of your revenue but because we were
• 5:09
  totally offline i don't think customers even noticed um they just carried on buying their
• 5:14
  drinks and food as normal so um yeah that's the closed loop system basically it's just a way
• 5:20
  of moving those payments offline to a secure yeah i could be wildly wide of the mark here but
• 5:30
  i'm going to give the exact i'm going to sort of reference the example where i think i've used this
• 5:34
  technology before and see if it if it is correct it was on holiday a couple of years ago in bulgaria
• 5:40
  of all places and we went to this amazing water park that had bars and restaurants and snack
• 5:46
  facilities and stuff there and rather than having to keep going back to your locker to get cash or
• 5:51
  your card or your phone or something when you arrived at the water park and you paid your entry
• 5:55
  got given a wristband that had a chip within the wristband you could then top up credit effectively
• 6:02
  onto your account that um corresponded to that wristband so if you wanted to visit any of the bars
• 6:07
  or the snack bars food concessions and things around the park you could just tap that wristband
• 6:12
  and effectively it was deducted from the money that you'd loaded on in advance and i thought wow
• 6:17
  this is absolutely fantastic and then when i read the notes about today's podcast i thought ah i
• 6:20
  wonder if that's a similar kind of system to what you guys are doing at festivals yeah exactly the
• 6:25
  same um so because it's on your wrist you don't have to take out your wallet you don't have to
• 6:31
  worry about that and because of that we've seen theft substantially go down at the events that
• 6:35
  we've been working on um the difference with our system is you can top it up in advance so using
• 6:42
  your ticket barcode number you can put that into the um website top it up in advance when you
• 6:49
  arrive your ticket's scanned and paired with a wristband so your money's automatically on your
• 6:54
  wrist you don't even need to top up when you're on site it's just done and so it's very seamless
• 6:59
  very easy for the attendee and obviously it's got live reporting for the organizers so they can see
• 7:04
  exactly what's been topped up but also what's been spent one benefit that i see straight away is is
• 7:12
  um mobile phone battery charge charging on site you know people are on their phones all the time
• 7:17
  and of course when that is your means of payment as well if that dies because you've been filming
• 7:23
  videos all day and on and off social media you've no way of paying so this you know one it might
• 7:30
  seem like a sort of small and significant problem to people oh my phone's died but when you take
• 7:35
  into account that people use it for payment it's a huge benefit isn't it to not have to rely on your
• 7:40
  mobile device yeah absolutely yeah um what i'm sorry i can if i can ask as well that a question
• 7:47
  that comes sort of to mind as well i'm sure a lot of people scream that is the security aspect you
• 7:52
  know that in terms of the actual bank data how does that work in terms of keeping people's payments
• 7:59
  and things like that secure when they've topped up credit um presumably this is a there are levels
• 8:05
  of of security built into that but is there any in any actual bank information stored within the
• 8:10
  system no it's just like a normal transaction um if you pay for something online so the system's
• 8:19
  quite separate it's done by an external payment um processor so but so by topping up in advance
• 8:25
  effectively you're just you're creating that level of credit i suppose onto your account
• 8:30
  that then is utilized on site exactly yeah and and so from a from a how are they deployed
• 8:37
  on site how do they manifest themselves is it is it responds is it cards are there options
• 8:42
  available to organizers yeah exactly it can be either um we generally use response more
• 8:49
  and we use cards a lot for artist credit and so that's another benefit i suppose to using the
• 8:56
  system and when you're putting your artists or your crew into the accreditation platform you
• 9:03
  can also put the meals that they're going to have and that can also go onto their wristbands
• 9:08
  um but yeah what you're pairing it to it's usually a ticket paired to an nfc chip and that nfc chip
• 9:14
  can be a wristband a card anything interesting so this is eliminating a lot of the sort of the
• 9:22
  old-fashioned voucher systems you know we think sort of backstage for for crewing as well you
• 9:27
  know for crew meals you know i've worked on event sites before where you'll get given vouchers for
• 9:31
  the week and you've got to hand those over which require a lot of admin in terms of the physical
• 9:35
  printing and the prep of those vouchers so there must be a lot of waste being eliminated with this
• 9:40
  process yeah it's not only the paper waste um but it's also the time consuming like the
• 9:46
  reconciliation at the end maybe some traders have lost some of their vouchers but they obviously
• 9:51
  still want to be paid for them and also really seeing who's spending what you know this artist
• 9:57
  got this amount of vouchers but they didn't really use them or you know you can really sort of see
• 10:03
  where that money's going and for big festivals the crew you know crew meals is a huge amount of money
• 10:10
  so to be able to actually track it properly is is very nice no absolutely how does it work for
• 10:16
  the vendors you know your your traditional sort of food vendors that are effectively paying for
• 10:21
  a pitch at a festival site to be there for the weekend um how is how are they set up with the
• 10:26
  necessary hardware so it's a long process in that we meet the traders quite early on um we get
• 10:34
  introduced to them they we give them access to the back office they can put in the products
• 10:39
  themselves they have control of their menu of their prices and all the event organizer can
• 10:45
  do it if the organizer would like to keep control of the prices and when they arrive to site we
• 10:51
  train everybody that uses our devices whether it's access control or traders we do um we do
• 10:58
  like hands-on training we show them the device we check through their menus with them make sure that
• 11:02
  they're happy and then yeah they take one of our devices they usually keep it for the weekend
• 11:07
  and charge it up themselves we give them a charger uh and yeah we're just on site really to support
• 11:13
  with any you know low batteries if we need to just run out and swap the battery over and stuff like
• 11:18
  that i think it's quite good for a trader to be honest because you know pitches are quite expensive
• 11:24
  and if you're doing it on just a regular pitch fee it can price out some of the smaller independent
• 11:30
  traders whereas with this system because they're all using um one system so the organizer has real
• 11:38
  transparent view of what they're selling they can do it on a revenue share and i think that
• 11:42
  opens up the pitches to those smaller independents that may have been priced up before
• 11:48
  if it's on a revenue share that risk is kind of reduced for the trader
• 11:53
  um you very you very briefly mentioned the word security and access control um
• 12:02
  and i've seen festival sites before where you know after the headline act
• 12:06
  finishes and you're trying to usher several thousand people in one direction who are on
• 12:10
  day tickets and several thousand people in the opposite direction who are camping and you're
• 12:16
  trying to identify their different colored wristbands in the dark what what benefits from
• 12:20
  a security and an access control point of view and how does that integrate with access control
• 12:26
  yeah i mean it's it's inherently it's all part of the same thing so rather than trying to look for
• 12:30
  the wristband in the dark they tap against either a handheld device or a fixed terminal on the wall
• 12:36
  or the fence you tap in it goes green they can pass and so you can reduce actually the number
• 12:44
  of stewards rather than having one steward checking each lane you can have maybe one terminal
• 12:50
  for each lane and one steward with eyes on six lanes at a time so it reduces the number of staffing
• 12:56
  and it's also much easier just to tap your wrist on the thing rather than like pull up your sleeve
• 13:02
  dig out your wristband it's quite easy just to tap it keeps the crowd flowing much quicker
• 13:08
  and but yeah indeed that's why with access control we see it a lot with um like we call it
• 13:14
  intrasite but zones within a festival zone vip zones camping zone backstage zones it's all written
• 13:21
  on the chip and because it's written within the chip it means you don't need to have so many
• 13:26
  different types of wristband everyone could just have the same wristband and it's all just done on
• 13:31
  whatever's written inside of that so it also saves waste and cost on getting additional wristbands
• 13:36
  printed and you've got to think as well of that that time that it takes in security briefings and
• 13:41
  the issuing of pass sheets at festivals where you're you know you've got a security or a steward
• 13:47
  trying to look at a pass sheet with a torch at 2am to see if somebody can come past with that
• 13:52
  wristband or or not so all of these factors time is money and if you've not going to have a
• 13:58
  as intense or longer briefing with all the security about different colored wristbands
• 14:02
  if it's as easy as that again that saving time isn't it you could be saving hours on staffing
• 14:08
  costs because they're not having to arrive as early for those briefings yeah exactly how does
• 14:14
  the ticket the the self-service self-service ticketing technology again was a phrase that
• 14:19
  i saw on some notes before today's podcast and i'm not quite sure what it is again you know
• 14:26
  we're used to going on websites and buying tickets ourselves so i thought well surely we're doing
• 14:30
  that already what what is the definition of self-service ticketing technology and how does
• 14:35
  it manifest itself in your operations so self-service actually relates to the festival
• 14:41
  organizer or the event organizer they can log they can just join up to the platform create their event
• 14:47
  and start selling tickets there's no um setup needed from our side it's self-service so it's
• 14:54
  for the organizer to come in set everything up and often they do ask for an account manager to
• 15:01
  come and just check everything and but yeah the amount of events that we have that are self-service
• 15:06
  that i only find out about because i'm attending it or like i get a ticket through and i'm like oh
• 15:10
  it's from us you know so many organizers just log in and create their own events
• 15:18
  so by using by using a platform like wees or does that eliminate the need for another ticketing
• 15:25
  provider and from a cost point of view if if that organizer is using using it for you know closed
• 15:30
  loop cashless payments and all that other stuff as well is this effectively reducing the need to
• 15:35
  go to some of those sort of other third-party ticketing companies who would who take a cut of
• 15:40
  that yeah exactly so wees event started out as a ticketing platform um and then it started
• 15:46
  wees access um and wees pay so yeah it is a standalone ticketing platform um the good thing
• 15:54
  about wees event is that all of the data is actually owned by the organizer and i think
• 15:59
  when we are approaching this age of ai coming into pulling all of our data sets together it's
• 16:07
  really really important to make sure that you do actually own your data as an event organizer
• 16:12
  um yeah it's it's one of the things that we're seeing a lot of at the moment is people are
• 16:17
  surprised when they don't um but yeah indeed it's just ticketing platform so it would be
• 16:24
  but also having it all in one place not just owning the data but having it in
• 16:28
  in one place and not having to to download spreadsheets or use api and you know integrations
• 16:35
  to get two different ticketing platform and a cashless payment platform provider to to talk
• 16:40
  to each other presumably if it's if it's all in one place even if they're using all three sort
• 16:45
  of elements of the system everything can talk to each other yeah exactly and it means that you've
• 16:50
  got access to some cool reporting that you didn't maybe have before when it was separate
• 16:54
  say for example we can now do spend per head by ticket type by arrival day so we know now that
• 17:02
  like i don't know some camper van people that arrive on a friday um are the biggest vendors
• 17:09
  for example you can really like look at those data sets and understand your audience and your
• 17:15
  community a little bit more um yeah that's quite cool i guess as well just to see you know if you
• 17:22
  really wanted to dive into it see what people's sort of food and beverage trends are you know so
• 17:27
  that you can you can plan your bar operations better if you know that you know we got absolutely
• 17:32
  hammered on this drink and we ran out of it so next year we need to do this and i guess just
• 17:37
  being able to look at those sort of the trends of what was purchased on site is going to be
• 17:43
  really good for future operations yeah and it's not even as far as next year it would be
• 17:49
  in an hour tomorrow you know it's live reporting where you can really see like that bar was busy
• 17:55
  last night we need to send more stock over there or that trader run is really doing well we need
• 18:00
  to get the waste management team over there now like it it's live reporting that yes you've got
• 18:05
  the historic data that you can use to really predict for the future but you can also react
• 18:11
  very quickly to what's happening in the ground i can see people sort of looking at screens on
• 18:15
  site like a bit like reading the matrix you know so they can so they can see certain you know
• 18:21
  certain sort of data streams sort of increasing and seeing trend lines go up and going right we
• 18:26
  need waste management over there because we can see that there's a spike in sales of you know
• 18:31
  pizzas because we know that that's then going to generate boxes and so on and so forth so
• 18:37
  is it that's an interesting one to look at because you know do you get ai within the platform to
• 18:42
  actually analyze some of that or does it take people who really know and understand the platform
• 18:47
  to be able to read that sort of information and to be able to interpret what the data is saying
• 18:52
  to them it's really both actually um we have event organizers that love data that like to look at
• 18:59
  it themselves and we've got live dashboards and which we customize depending on what they want
• 19:04
  to see so if they're very interested in pizza sales we would have the dashboard that's just for
• 19:09
  that um but we also do integrate with ai that sort of um can do this predictions that we
• 19:18
  didn't have access to before um so yeah both and have you do you then do you recommend to
• 19:27
  organizers that they use you know ai platforms or is that integrated within your own platform
• 19:33
  have you got some sort of ai that that lives within we's event now there's not an internal
• 19:38
  ai at the moment um so but we are working closely with um another company that does pull together
• 19:45
  all the different data sets and has like a ai powered operating system interesting and and
• 19:52
  what i've referenced at the very start it's something like boomtown because i know that's
• 19:56
  an event that you've you've worked with what what how have they deployed the cashless sort of the
• 20:02
  closed loop system now for is it one year two years how long have they been using that and to
• 20:06
  what success i think we're in year four year five really yeah it's been going for a little while and
• 20:13
  it's been it's been great i think um all around like boomtown like any large greenfield event is
• 20:22
  complex you know we've got the different areas within the site different arrival days we've got
• 20:27
  weekend tickets plus wednesday like wednesday add-on tickets and a very large volunteer and
• 20:33
  crew um contingent so yeah there's a lot of a lot of things going on with boomtown and they use it
• 20:42
  they use every element of the system they really do and bring lots of complexity into it which is
• 20:48
  great it's one of the most fascinating projects to work on um so trying to think what we do there
• 20:56
  um like the gate predictions we can really see if there's going to be a spike in the queue
• 21:02
  so we can spend more scanning team um we have crew and artist credit on all of the wristbands
• 21:09
  through the accreditation platform which um yeah feeds into it automatically we have now started
• 21:16
  gamification which was brought in last year um so this is points fixed around the festival
• 21:26
  people can tap in using their wristband it just takes a tap as you walk into a venue
• 21:31
  all of that information is then fed into an ai-powered system which post event will generate
• 21:39
  a personalized video a little bit like a spotify unwrapped saying like you were here you watched
• 21:44
  this band and you know it's really cool um memento that you can give your audience that's completely
• 21:51
  unique to them is there any um social media integration so has it reached a point yet
• 21:56
  where somebody could tap in and sort of pre-event in their portal or something you know link their
• 22:02
  social media accounts so when they're on site they tap into a particular stage or an area
• 22:07
  it kind of you know posts on their social media or you know tags them that they're there
• 22:12
  has it has it reached that level of integration yet it totally could i i don't know anyone that's
• 22:17
  done it but this great idea indeed it could definitely happen well there you go you heard
• 22:22
  it you heard it on this podcast i'm going to be getting my people to talk to your people about
• 22:29
  some some sort of one percent cut of that but no i just think it's you know again going back
• 22:34
  to this thing of we rely on our phones so much and i've been there you know on on weekend festivals
• 22:39
  you know you're carrying battery packs around you know you you are on your phone a lot um people
• 22:44
  want to take videos they want to share stuff and i just think if if there's opportunities kind of
• 22:48
  share stuff without actually having to touch their their device you know if you've already got some
• 22:53
  sort of integration happening there you know on the wristbands anyway that you know there's other
• 22:57
  things that then you know presumably can be can be integrated and sort of once the foundations
• 23:03
  are there of any technology actually getting it to do other things that can sometimes be the simple
• 23:07
  part it's having the foundations in place i guess with a lot of these platforms yeah exactly but
• 23:13
  yeah technically it could definitely work there you go you heard it here first on the podcast
• 23:19
  everybody i came up with an idea and it could potentially be good um and there is a first time
• 23:24
  for everything um just before we wrap up today's um podcast if people want to find you uh presumably
• 23:31
  you guys given the very nature of the sort of the industry that you're working in you know
• 23:34
  you're on social media they can they can search you on any of the platforms and see what you're up to
• 23:39
  yeah absolutely um it's just wee's event fabulous and one one thing i should i should ask actually
• 23:46
  before before we wrap up from a venue point of view we've referenced festivals you know
• 23:51
  um and temporary events but is this technology are you working from a ticketing point of view
• 23:56
  and a closed loop sort of cashless payment are you working with with venues as well music venues
• 24:01
  things like that on you know then deploying this on a you know day-to-day and a week-to-week basis
• 24:07
  yes so we work with venues more on an open loop basis so our devices can be used also with a
• 24:14
  bank card like a credit or a debit card and so often with venues we'll use both and we'll have
• 24:21
  um the option to pay with a normal bank card or debit card or artists um credit can be put onto a
• 24:27
  nfc card and then that also gives the added value of having memberships so people that come to the
• 24:32
  venue a lot you know your loyal fans they could get a membership card and that can be used for
• 24:38
  the access control to the venue but also to pay um and that could give them like discounted drinks
• 24:44
  or you know it's a really good way of building a community for a venue excellent no thank you for
• 24:50
  answering that because i know that venues a lot of venues particularly smaller to medium
• 24:56
  size venues you know they're struggling at the moment and there's all there's always a lot of
• 25:00
  coverage about small music venues um and campaigns to keep these venues alive we know how many are
• 25:06
  closing you know on a monthly and a yearly basis and i i generally think that the sort of the
• 25:11
  technology platforms that are out there if we can educate some of those venues into how much more
• 25:16
  efficient it can make their processes uh you know from a cost-saving point of view from a staffing
• 25:21
  point of view all the stuff that we've referenced today that's relevant to a festival could be
• 25:24
  relevant i think to a lot of venues and and helping them understand what is out there and um
• 25:29
  and how they could maybe save save a few pennies you know ultimately it could could go a long way
• 25:34
  to helping venues 100 you know all of this data analysis that we now have is almost more important
• 25:42
  to those small and medium organizations venues festivals anybody that you know it's more
• 25:47
  important to those and you know maybe it's even more uh easier to implement for the smaller ones
• 25:53
  that don't have the problems with like um like structural organization of data that the bigger
• 26:01
  festivals that have lots of different events are yeah definitely absolutely um we've been talking
• 26:07
  today on the event industry news podcast with jess gould from we's event if you want to find out a bit
• 26:12
  more about what that those guys do uh take a look through some of their other case studies and the
• 26:16
  work that they're up to at the moment and in the past indeed we's event.com is the website to go to
• 26:21
  and as jess said search for them on all the social media platforms and you'll find what they're up to
• 26:26
  before we wrap up today's episode just a couple of little mentions for stuff that's happening
• 26:30
  with eventindustrynews.com if you've started your journey today by listening to the podcast on your
• 26:36
  podcast audio platform please do make sure that you visit eventindustrynews.com take a look at
• 26:40
  the special news features supplements all the good stuff that's going off on the website as well as
• 26:45
  the supplier directory if you work in the events industry and you're looking for a product service
• 26:49
  or supplier the chances are you will find it within that extensive supplier directory over
• 26:54
  on eventindustrynews.com where you can also watch video versions of all of our podcasts
• 27:00
  of course you may have started your journey there today and if you have thank you very much for doing
• 27:04
  so and for watching today's podcast but please do make sure that you search for the podcast wherever
• 27:09
  you get your audio podcast from that could be spotify or apple podcasts and make sure that
• 27:14
  you like and subscribe so that you get the latest episodes when they drop each week. Thanks very
• 27:20
  much once again to my guest Jess Gould from Wee's event it's been a pleasure talking and we'll see
• 27:24
  on the next edition of the event industry news podcast goodbye everybody