Sziget Festival has broken a record with more than 400,000 visitors in 2014. Sziget has been cashless for years, but this summer it has switched to Cardnet, Hungary’s leading payment card provider. The Festipay solution from Cardnet has seen a remarkably successful season, with Sziget being the fifth festival in a row this summer using Cardnet’s self-developed intelligent contactless payment service, with seamless performance.
This year, payments at Sziget could be made either using a Festipay card, a Festival Watch (an NFC-enabled watch) or a PayPass bank card, all thee being contactless payment methods. One would simply tap the device of their choice on the merchant’s POS terminal to quickly and easily pay for a purchase. The system helped the organizers, as every financial transaction was traceable, and it also provided benefits to the merchants, as they didn’t need to handle cash, payment was much easier and festivalgoers could spend less time standing in line.
More than 95% of the payment transactions at Sziget were made with a Festipay card or a payment watch, and PayPass cards were used for the remaining 5%. Festipay cards were topped up using cash by 70% of the visitors, while 30% of them used a bank card for this purpose. Cardholders on average have loaded as much as 60% higher sum to their payment cards than those using cash, thus the total volume of card-based top-up transactions surpassed that of cash-based ones. “Szitizens” took good care of their cards, as only a mere 295 of the more than 90,000 Festipay cards issued were lost, representing a loss rate of less than 0.3%. This is probably partly due to the introduction of new pass holders with a lanyard, offering protection against accidental loss or theft.
CEO of Cardnet László Márki said: “In just one season we managed over 5 million transactions in the value of several billion forints. Our system was built to ensure safe and secure operation, so that we can manage and store transactions even in case of a power or internet service outage. So far, Sziget was the largest festival in our portfolio in the past 4 years. We had 400 team members on the field, and we had 100 top-up stations in 25 containers servicing visitors – our highest number yet – whose cards were accepted for payment at roughly a thousand terminals. We’re planning a number of new features for next year to offer even faster and simpler top-up and payments. And with Cellum’s mobile payment technology, visitors will be able to top up their cards using their smartphones.”
Károly Gerendai, Managing Director of Sziget Cultural Management, the organizer of the festival, said:
“Festipay has lived up to our expectations, our merchants and our visitors have all given us positive feedback. We’ve seen other European and overseas festivals showing interest to the system we use. Cash payments are slower, less secure and and less transparent, and the age of paper coupons, stamps and coins is over. We are ready to extend our cooperation with Cardnet and Cellum beyond our own festivals as well.”
Following the announcement earlier this year, festivalgoers could use Festipay cards, the cashless payment system from Cardnet, at four festivals – Gourmet, VOLT Festival, MasterCard Balaton Sound and Sziget Festival – organized by the Sziget Cultural Management Agency in 2014. The system has provided fault-free service to a total of nearly 700,000 visitors at four festivals.