Street Performers Take a Mobile Payments Cue From Chinese Beggars

Call it one of those items that’s only obvious in retrospect. Perhaps better, call it one of those items that really should have been obvious in retrospect up until this very second. Whatever you call it, call it another leap forward for mobile payments as buskers—the street performers we’ve all seen and most love—are turning to mobile point of sale systems to gather up tips for their impromptu performances.

Street performers, or buskers as they’re often known, ran into the same problem that Chinese beggars did not so long ago, and that a French church also hit recently. The problem? People carry less cash these days because they’d increasingly rather turn to a credit card, debit card, or smartphone-based system using one of those as a basis.

So, perhaps unsurprisingly, the buskers responded in a similar fashion: they brought mobile payments into their operations by way of mobile point of sale (PoS) systems that allowed them to accept payment via mobile payments mechanisms. This isn’t as easy as some might think, though, as many acts don’t have the opportunity to stop in the middle to accept swipes and dips, and convincing an entire crowd to pull a card during a performance can be a tough move to pull off.

Thus, work is already in progress on a mPOS solution that specifically works with the busking lifestyle, thanks to The Busking Project, known as the world’s largest collective of buskers. With over 5,600 buskers in 114 different countries represented, it’s clear this group may have the best overview of busking and its needs.

The concept in general represents something of a sea change. We’re seeing increasingly how different markets are being impacted by the move to mobile payments; French churches, Chinese beggars, and now the world’s supply of buskers is making the move to mobile payments. While there will always be those that prefer cash, the world must also grow to accommodate those for whom cash has become a burden, liability, or outright danger.

Yet in these smaller points, we see that the mobile payments market is catching on in general, and is likely to keep going, resulting in a world so into mobile payments that even the guy playing guitar on the street corner will take Apple Pay, or the like.