Extending contactless technology to the independent sector with WOMAD, Weyfest & more

WOMAD

Fresh from enabling some of the UK’s largest music and sports events to experience the benefits of contactless technology for access, payments and social media-integration, we have now succeeded in our goal to make these systems accessible to the independent sector.

This summer has already seen us deliver our In-Site contactless solutions to such major events as The Isle Of Wight, T In The Park, Barclaycard British Summer Time in Hyde Park, Goodwood Festival Of Speed and the UEFA Champions League Final at Wembley.

In a groundbreaking development for the festival industry, IVS has now undertaken commercial deployments at a diverse range of independent UK events.

July saw us take our In-Site access system (which works with both RFID and barcode-enabled wristbands) to WOMAD in Charlton Park, Wiltshire, in collaboration with outdoor networking specialists EtherLive. All visitors to the celebrated world music festival will be scanned-in using the system and a customised integration with EtherLive’s Youth Registration system promoted greater safety for the event’s many teenage attendees by electronically linking their wristbands to a responsible adult in their party.

August saw us deploy a closed-loop cashless payment system using RFID cards at Galtres Parklands Festival in North Yorkshire. At Cornbury Festival and Weyfest we enabled the bars with IP-based card payment terminals accepting chip and PIN, swipe and contactless payments from VISA and MasterCard credit and debit cards, a real-time transactional and management interface for the bar operator and event management, showing transactions by terminal and location as they happen. At Weyfest we also installed card payment terminals in the ticket box office.

Our payment solution is powered by Global Payments, a Tier-One acquirer, and delivered in conjunction with our Payment Service Provider partners TS3 Services Ltd., a PCI-DSS certified transaction processing provider connected to all the major UK acquirers. The combination of these partners enables us to offer much faster payment processing speeds than in the high street (typically just 2-4 seconds), with features specifically designed for the outdoor events market and the lowest transaction rates. The solution is backed by MasterCard Europe as part of their effort to support the spread of electronic payments into the Festivals and events market.

Claire O’Neill, General Manager of the Association Of Independent Festivals (AIF) says: “Promoting more efficiently managed events and improving customer experience have always been priorities for the AIF. We can see that contactless technology holds great promise for both and we are very encouraged that independent festivals are now starting to adopt it. We look forward to working with IVS to further this exciting process and help enable our members to benefit to the fullest possible extent.”

Paul Pike, IVS director, comments: “Whilst we are very proud of our work with our large event clients, it has long been our ambition to extend the benefits of this technology to the independent sector, where we feel it has the potential to make an even greater difference to organisers. We consider it a great accomplishment to have made our systems sufficiently cost-effective to achieve this aim. And this is just the beginning”.

Tom McInerney, director of Etherlive, comments: “The continued growth of contactless technology within events heralds a greater customer experience and lower management costs. Leveraging site networks to support payment systems in addition to production internet, CCTV, people counting and ticket scanning helps independent festivals drive cost effectiveness.”