With festival season coming to a rapid end, PFS, a UK e-money issuer and financial technology specialist recently announced the findings of its prepaid solutions developed specifically for events and festivals.
As the issuer and program manager for Festipay, one of the largest cashless payment service providers in the Hungarian festival market, PFS launched an open loop contactless prepaid Mastercard solution for Sziget festival, contributing in over 3 million cashless transactions being made.
Festipay anticipates processing over 7 million transactions by the end of this year’s festival season, up 27 percent from 5.5 million in 2015.
Sziget brought forth cashless payments via closed-loop festival cards in 2010, with reimbursements needing to be paid to attendees at the end of the festival.
This year threw a wrench in the pattern however, as festivalgoers were given the option load cash on an open loop contactless prepaid Mastercard.
Laszlo Marki, CEO, Festipay said: “Being able to give festival attendees the choice of an open-loop product to be used during and after Sziget was a great way to introduce a prepaid solution to millennials in Hungary. For us, the solution is also great from a branding perspective, as the Festipay cards are valid for two years from their issue date.
“The popularity of open-loop cards meant that many attendees did not require reimbursement for unspent cash loaded onto the cards, but for those who were using the closed-loop product, the agile technology platform PFS provides significantly reduced the amount of time taken to process refunds. As 100 per cent cashless festivals increase in popularity, having a robust and fast reimbursement system in place was a crucial factor for us.”
Noel Moran, CEO, Prepaid Financial Services said: “The open-loop solution we provided at Sziget was a great success, and Festipay will continue to generate revenue from this programme long after the festival has ended. The introduction of open-loop cards coupled with the streamlined reimbursement process for unspent funds demonstrates how easily this could be rolled out to every festival or event anywhere in Europe without any friction.
“We’re excited to see how prepaid financial products evolve in the next few years as cashless and contactless solutions become more prevalent in the events industry.”
