Cashless Payments for Festivals
Successful festivals generate 60% of their revenue from in-event cashless payments. Start using our solution in minutes. Everything you need to set up Oveit Pay is a smartphone and internet connection. Contact us now and upgrade your festival with cashless payments.
Schedule a demo
What are cashless payments for festivals?
Mid-sized and large festivals provide both entertainment and a place where visitors can meet and purchase from local vendors. During your festival, visitors will purchase food, beverages, fashion, and many other goods. One way of accepting payments for these goods is via cash and/or traditional card payments. The best one for you, your visitors and your vendors is closed loop cashless payments.
Closed loop cashless payments are a great way to turbo-charge your festival economy. It helps your guests top up a virtual account, used to purchase goods from festival vendors. The topup can be done before the event, when tickets are purchased or during the event, at topup points or using our digital wallet.
The virtual account can be accessed via NFC/RFID wristbands or cards. In some cases, the payments can be done via mobile wallets on the visitor’s phone. Oveit provides you with both the NFC/RFID wristbands and cards, as well as the cashless payment system that makes them work. This is Oveit Pay.
To allow the transactions to happen, the vendors need to have a special app installed on smartphones. This app allows them to keep track of the products they sell, charge customers and see detailed reports of their sales. This is the Oveit POS (Point of Sale) app.
With the help of our cashless payments technology for festivals you can easily onboard vendors, allow customers to pre-topup their virtual wallet, and process payments in your festival. When the event is done, based on the real-time reports, you can clear transactions with your vendors and retain your festival’s commission or fee.
This is just one example of the advantages you get when implementing cashless payments at your festival. With the right system to connect them, your vendors and visitors become a vibrant and active economy, which you can tap into for revenue and data.
Frequently asked questions about festival cashless payments
I do my ticketing with another company. Can I still use Oveit Pay?
Of course. We’ve built Oveit Pay in such a way that you can easily import or sync tickets, access control rights, or even the amount on any given virtual account. Even if you don’t do ticketing with us.
I run a very large festival. Sometimes the internet is not working. What happens with Oveit Pay then?
Most of our customers run large events. In most cases, the internet connection is not entirely reliable. That’s why we’ve built Oveit Edge Pay, our edge-of-the-cloud payment system. Oveit Edge Pay is a hybrid payment system that operates locally, securely, through wireless connections and still syncs the data online when the internet comes back again.
I have some NFC wristbands already. Can I still use them with Oveit Pay?
Of course – our cashless payments system for festivals can work with any Mifare 1K standard NFC chip. Most likely – your wristbands or cards have this standard. If you don’t know how to test, please reach out to us and we’ll help you through it.
Why use cashless payments at festivals?
We know what you might be thinking – why not pay by cash or card? There are two big reasons why closed-loop cashless payments are a great deal for your event: you get access to all payments processed in the venue and the data that comes with it. This way you can increase your revenue by 60%, charging a fee to vendors selling goods and services. Having access to data also improves the type of goods and services you offer to your visitors. You know what sells and when and you can better adjust your supply chain. This way your visitors’ needs are met and exceeded every time.
Key features for your team and guests
Bringing your team together: how does our cashless payment system work at festivals?
Oveit Pay is a world leader in cashless payments solutions for festivals. Our system brings together festival owners, local vendors, visitors, and sponsors. You can use it in a multitude of setups but our most popular use cases are:
Festival vendors
Using our cashless payments solution you can invite vending partners or teammates to your account. This will allow them to accept payments, with Oveit Pay operating as a local mobile POS device. Vendors receive a special account that allows them to accept cashless payments using their mobile devices. They can view their transactions in real time and edit product menus on the fly. Alternatively they can preset menus before the event and have them synced on their account when the event starts.
This allows you to set up a great partnership with vendors. You bring in the customers and the entertainment, they supply goods and services. With real-time reports regarding sales, you can choose between setting up your vendors with flat fee signups or percentage-based commissions. When it comes to the technical side of it, you can rest assured we have your back. You will be able to provide the right cashless payments solution at your festival, no matter the size.
Topup stations
With our topup point view, you can create special topup stations where visitors can add credit via cash or card. This way you can help visitors top up their digital wallets at topup stations or using Oveit's Digital wallet. With Oveit Pay you can onboard a team of cashiers that can accept credit cards or cash popups at special vending points. We simplify the needed hardware with our technology. The only devices you will need are Android mobile devices (tablet or smartphone). Optionally, you may need Bluetooth-connected external NFC readers and printers to print topup and withdrawal receipts.
The right mobile wallet for your festival: Oveit Wallet
Using our digital wallet technology, your visitors can connect their credit cards and topup a virtual account on their phone. Afterwards they can pay using dynamic QR codes. This is an alternative to NFC wristbands or cards which sometimes may seem too pricey. Whenever a transaction is being processed, the Oveit POS generates a dynamic QR code that can be scanned by the customer, in order to authorize the transaction. Simple, fast, and secure. Visitors have instant access to their funds and can have full transparency into their transactions.
Pack extra fun with Addons
Payments can come in many forms. Sometimes they are not fungible, meaning they cannot be divided. Let’s say you want to store benefits like a t-shirt, a few burgers, and a bottle of wine for a special guest. You can store these addons on the same virtual wallet you use to store money. Addons work great with cashless payments for festivals.
These are special payment tokens you can use at your festival. They can hold benefits, products and services. Let’s say someone purchases the VIP package that entitles them to unlimited beer, one festival t-shirt, access to the pool, a fancy dinner at a partner restaurant, and a $100 credit at the festival. You can pack the beer, the festival t-shirt, access to the pool, and the dinner as add ons. These are non fungible tokens that can be claimed in the venue. Oveit Pay operates with both add ons (non fungible) and digital wallet payments (fungible). Oh, there’s one more thing – if you want to move these to the blockchain, you can, with our NFT tickets.
Let's talk
Book a product call
Our team would love to guide you through using Oveit Pay,
our cashless payments solution for festivals
Setting up cashless payments at your festival
Setting up cashless payments:
1. How to onboard visitors in the cashless payments system at your festival?
When you are managing a midsize or large festival, crowd management is crucial. Onboarding visitors, handling wristbands distribution and cashless payments onboarding need to be straightforward. That’s why you can easily onboard customers in two ways:
- Allow for prior topup: in this case, the user registers online through a ticketing platform (Oveit or any other system) and receives their cashless payments wristband at the event. Their ticket is scanned on arrival and paired with an RFID wristband or card. This way the funds pre-topped up are moved to the wristband and the user starts with a preloaded balance. In this case, the wristband is activated when the ticket and wristband are paired.
- Allow for topup on the location: this is a much faster onboarding process and allows for RFID wristbands to be handed out, without a prior matching between tickets and wristbands. This greatly reduces the time spent onboarding. Wristbands are activated when the visitor first tops up their balance.
2. Onboarding vendors into your festival
When handling cashless payments for festivals, one of the main tasks is onboarding vendors in your event. This should be done within a reasonable time prior to the event, with enough time for the vendors to get accustomed to the system and add their product menus. You can invite them straight from your Oveit Pay user admin panel, by just entering their email. Afterwards – they sign up, fill in their details and they’re allocated to your event. If you happen to manage more than one event on Oveit, they will only get access to the event they were invited to.
Vendors get access to both an analytics dashboard and the mobile POS. Using these two interfaces they will be able to add products, view reports, and accept payments in your festival.
One thing to note is that vendors don’t have to be external. If you are handling vending points within your event, these accounts can be set to be operated by your staff. Oveit becomes a team tool for all your staff to use and enjoy.
3. Adding topup stations for cashless payments
When handling cashless payments for festivals, one of the main tasks is onboarding vendors in your event. This should be done within a reasonable time prior to the event, with enough time for the vendors to get accustomed to the system and add their product menus. You can invite them straight from your Oveit Pay user admin panel, by just entering their email. Afterwards – they sign up, fill in their details and they’re allocated to your event. If you happen to manage more than one event on Oveit, they will only get access to the event they were invited to.
Vendors get access to both an analytics dashboard and the mobile POS. Using these two interfaces they will be able to add products, view reports, and accept payments in your festival.
One thing to note is that vendors don’t have to be external. If you are handling vending points within your event, these accounts can be set to be operated by your staff. Oveit becomes a team tool for all your staff to use and enjoy.
4. Handling remaining balances for festival cashless payments
Most festival visitors have remaining balances when the festival is done. There are several ways you can tackle this using Oveit Pay:
- Automatically send remaining funds back when the event is done: this is possible if the customer has initially generated a transaction in our system using a credit card. This can be an initial ticket purchase or topup. Once the event is done, Oveit Pay automatically releases funds back to your customer, when you instruct the system to, as long as you have enough available funds in your account.
- Refund payments in cash: Oveit displays funds in real-time in your topup point viewing interface. In this scenario, visitors head over to the topup stations and withdraw their funds. Your staff can scan the wristband, refund the remaining funds and clear the virtual account.
- Allow visitors to use the remaining balance with another of your events: whether your festival is part of a larger network or you want to allow your customers to use the funds with next year’s event, you can do this with Oveit Pay.
5. Going beyond the festival gates – extend cashless payments in the community
At Oveit we believe that the best experiences are the ones that are great for visitors, organizers, vendors, and of course, the local community. Most festivals create amazing experiences inside the festival venue. However, many communities offer local attractions that can help visitors extend their experiences beyond the festival. Your guests will have to find accommodations, dine and shop outside the festival space. Unless you’re handling the Burning Man festival in which case – do call us.
In a recent study, it was found that most communities would greatly benefit from festival visitors if the payment infrastructure would allow them to connect with them. In this case, visitors would have fun and spend time at the event but at the same time they would discover the local attractions, book hotel stays, and contribute to the local economy by purchasing outside the festival.
For a long time, this would have been counterproductive to the festival’s earnings. But now, with Oveit, you can help visitors connect with the local attractions and accommodations and generate more revenue for yourself, as well as relevant data. With Oveit you can take your closed loop payments system and extend it to your local partners:
- Hotels and accommodation: allow guests to use their RFID wristband to check in the hotel, which can be pre-purchased as a ticket addon.
- Restaurants and bars: partner with local restaurants and bars, invite them in the cashless payment system and they can accept festival payments, even if they are not a part of the festival. All they need is a smartphone device and they can accept payments from your guests.
- Local producers of goods and services: give the guests a chance to discover local manufacturers and businesses and allow them to help the local economy.
- Tour operators and guides: arrange outside-the-festival experiences while still allowing your guests to feel safe – there is no need to carry cash if they are using the cashless payments wristbands from your festival.
A few days at the festival is fun but extending your visitors’ experience outside the festival can create a lifetime memory. Your customers will happily remember their visit and gladly return the following years. Discover more about how you can build an economy around your event.
Wallet on a wrist
NFC/RFID wristbands
NFC/RFID wristbands are great tools at festivals. They use an internal chip to handle data storage and in our case cashless payments. The NFC in this case stands for Near Field Communication. It is a secure form of wireless communication that allows two devices placed within 1.6 inches (4 cm) of each other to communicate. It’s fast, secure and used by most tap-and-pay credit cards or phones.
When used in festivals, RFID wristbands can handle payments and can be connected to the attendees’ tickets. By just tapping their wristbands, visitors gain access to their benefits, pay and enter/exit the venue.
Other benefits
Other benefits of using RFID wristbands and Cashless Payments
Cashless payments for festivals is just one thing that comes pre-packed with our solution. There’s more. From access control to empowering sponsors to engage with your visitors, you can do most of the things you are thinking of right now. Plus a few you haven’t thought of.
Here’s a brief list:
Access control
NFC/RFID wristbands and cards are great ways to quickly scan visitors in. From a festival venue to a theme park, all great venues use contactless chips to check access rights. Our scanning tools can check whether your visitors can come in and where they are allowed to go. With our software, you can set up complex access management credentials according to the visitors’ ticket options. All you need to scan visitors in are either smartphones or NFC/RFID readers. We can provide both.
Using NFC/RFID wristbands to increase access speed
NFC/RFID chips are contactless. This means they can be scanned from far or by just approaching them to a scanning device. This helps with speed and visitor flow. Here is an example: you can set up access points at the entrance, at special areas in your venue and you can specify who has access and who does not. Visitors can even personalize their ideal journey by selecting which part of your venue they are comfortable paying for access.
Interactive screens and personalised experiences
Interactive screens are a great way to engage your visitors. Using them you can create amazing marketing campaigns and activations for you and your sponsors. They can be really fun. The question is – can we make it personal? Can we really interact and personalise the marketing message?
Using Oveit – yes. Our contactless technology helps you tap into visitor profiles and create personal, fun messages. The NFC technology transfers
Multi day passes
Being connected to your guest’s account, the NFC chip lets you know at any given moment which are his access credentials.
A simple tap will show you if access is granted for one or more days (essential information if you hold a multi-day festival) and if you should let them in a particular area (ex: the VIP lounge).
At the end of your event and during the event you can view real-time info on where your visitors are spending their time and which are their favourite activities.
Going hybrid with edge payments:
What happens when the internet is down?
Most payment systems (traditional POS’s, card payments) rely on wireless phone networks like 4G or LTE to process payments. However, when many people visit a location, the local phone connections become unstable and ultimately – they cannot stop functioning. This can be disastrous for your festival. However, we have created a solution: our edge cashless payments technology for festivals and large venues.
Our edge payments technology is based on locally distributed ledgers, embedded in IoT devices, and secured with AI algo … well, you get the point – there’s a lot of cool tech under the hood. What it boils down to is that Oveit helps you to process payments even if the internet is down, even when there’s tens of thousands of people in your venue, trying to live stream your show.
But there’s more – it’s not just the internet that can fail. It can be bad weather, people tripping over the wires, electricity issues, or even power outages that fry the local network. We solved all these issues. With Oveit Edge Pay you can safely assume that you will be able to handle tens or hundreds of visitors at your festival, with the best possible prices and full control over the data. While Oveit Edge Pay requires specialised setup – we are here to help. Just click below and contact us for more information.
What are edge payments?
Edge payments get their name from the term edge computing. It means computing that is done at the edge of the cloud. The system can connect to the internet but does most of the data processing on premise. Our technology travels securely through Wireless local connections and processes payment information on local, mesh-connected servers. It uses a special decentralised communication protocol to make sure that even if part of the system fails, there are plenty of other devices that can take its place.
Benefits
We know how much your festival's success means to you.
We've built our NFC products with you in mind.
Here are some of the ways you can benefit from it:
Receive payments instantly with
Oveit allows you to receive payments directly into your account using our preferred payment gateways. Alternatively we can integrate with a local payment processor our your ticketing provider.
See more reviews:
Related content
Why use RFID and NFC technology within an event?
The Near Field Communication (NFC) ushered in a new age of technology. This particular innovation, brings an added value to the traditional concept of events, representing the key solution in creating wired experiences.
NFC can be used via smartphones and other enabled badges and devices, with amazing benefits for both event hosts and attendees. Basically, it’s a small chip that allows 2 devices to talk to each other when they’re in close proximity. Read more …
Cashless payments dramatically improve water parks experience
I’m an advocate of using NFC technology for water parks, a technology that can make the experience a better one for attendees. How? By linking the wristband to a customer account and crediting it (so there will be no need to carry cash around or periodically visiting the locker to grab some more).
Also, the wristband can replace the key to the locker, helping attendees concentrate on the only thing that should be important while they are on site: having fun! Read more …
How do you prepare for a cashless event?
Use the right tool, so you don’t have to use 2 of 3 different software products for one event (our friends used Oveit to sell tickets, check in attendees, print badges and set up the cashless payment system). We used our software “as a hole” and made it really easy to associate the NFC wristbands to an attendee and credit his/her account.
Test your hardware. For this event, we used 24 laptops, 10 NFC readers, and 6 thermal printers. It all worked well but you can be sure that we didn’t wait […] Read more …
How to reduce queues during festivals
Visitors can top-up money on their wristbands at any point of the event, pay without queuing in lines – everything just with a simple tap while event organizers benefit of transparency and complete control with real time reports over all sales.
The wristband is synced with a specific ticket category which allows the visitors to access all their designated areas more easily and if entitled receive perks such as T-shirts, free drinks, etc. Read more …
How to use Oveit’s built-in NFC technology for access control?
If you host multiple days events in spaces that have multiple areas/halls you know that sometimes it may be difficult to verify access credential for all of your attendees.
One way to do it is to use different color wristbands, but this way will be difficult to collect information on your attendees’ access preferences: what time do they arrive? when do they leave? what halls/areas were most visited?
Read more …
How to set up a cashless payment system
We have created this tutorial to show you how easily you can set it up, without the need for expensive hardware. You just need NFC readers(to connect them to laptops) and NFC wristbands.
To create the top-up points (we name them cashiers) and stores you will need to create some new users. Read more …