Prior to the Covid pandemic, if I was writing this blog post, I would be discussing the benefits of cashless payments over using cash. However, 2020 saw drastic changes in how people paid with contactless and mobile wallet usage increasing, at the expense of cash.
Just 17% of payments in the UK were by cash in 2020, compared to 56% in 2010. This shift in the way consumers make payments looks set to continue.
Firstly, let’s take a look at some of the key benefits of cashless payment systems when compared to cash transactions.
1. Reduce wait times
Cashless payment systems reduce wait times. We find transaction times can be 6 x faster when compared to cash transactions, reducing the average transaction time from 90 seconds, to just 15 seconds. Put another way, instead of processing, say 30 sales per minute, that can be increased to 180 sales every minute.
Lines are shorter and move more quickly. Your guests spend less time waiting in line and more time enjoying the action. And instead of being deterred from buying that extra drink or snack, shorter lines mean your guests will buy their refreshments as and when required.
2. Drive revenue
Cashless payments make purchasing easier for your attendees. When buying is easier, attendees spend more. Events see an average revenue increase of 22% with Tappit’s cashless payment system. Shorter lines and frictionless payment methods combine to increase per person spend.
3. Reduce operating costs
Handling cash comes with costs - storing and depositing cash funds, transportation, staff errors, security and reconciliation for example. Remove cash from your venue and you eliminate these costs.
And these savings can be huge. The Mercedes-Benz stadium saved $350,000 over 49 events in 2020 by eliminating cash from their venue whilst The Tampa Bay Rays reported savings of $150,000 in operating and manpower costs.
Cashless payment solutions also eliminate the risk of fraud and theft and provide a clear paper trail, automatically. All sources of funds are easy to identify and there’s no risk of vendors under-reporting sales.
The benefits above can be realised by simply removing cash from a venue - something that’s also possible by simply only using contactless payment methods such as contactless cards or third party mobile payments.
Cashless payments vs card payments
So what are the additional benefits of a cashless payment system versus contactless payment methods that are driving events and venues to invest in their own payment ecosystem? Let’s take a look.
4. Grow your event with real time data
Cashless payments help event organisers to take full control of their event’s analytics and reporting. All customer transaction data is owned by you, not the banks and this gives you access to unprecedented insights into the behaviour of your customers.
Tappit Insights, our real-time reporting dashboard gives you actionable data insights so you can make informed decisions which increase revenue. No matter who you’re partnered with, we can integrate with all of your technology partners and consolidate all of the data from those disparate systems into our reporting dashboard.
Tappit Insights ensures you have a complete view of every attendee’s spending patterns and the most popular products. You can quickly and easily see what’s working and what isn’t and make improvements on the go. Identify the quiet times for concessions and those which are gathering queues, then deploy staff appropriately. Find the product purchasing patterns, interrogate the available demographic data and provide additional value for sponsors.
Data is made available in an easy to understand format. And a deep dive post-event analysis offers invaluable insights which can be implemented to make your event even better the next time around. This data is invaluable for deciding which vendors to include at your next event.
5. Increase customer loyalty
The first-party data you get from going cashless helps you to understand the customer journey and their spending habits. In turn, this can be leveraged in Tappit’s loyalty platform to create targeted rewards and incentives, based on attendee behaviours.
Organisers can reward and engage attendees with targeted promotions and giveaways. Incentivise behaviours - offer a promotion for attendees to get to the event earlier or make more purchases than they normally would.
Create more value for your sponsors by offering them the opportunity to run their own rewards and incentives programme. Demonstrate ROI easily - to your business, your sponsors and partners.
6. Secure your event
Event security is always a high priority for event organisers. Cashless payments can help with this by reducing lines. The real-time analytics data available helps you identify and bottlenecks quickly so staff can be quickly deployed.
Petty theft is a common issue for multi-day festivals. By removing cash and contactless cards you eliminate the incentive for this type of crime. As a result, attendees feel safer.
The impact of Covid is still being felt and the changes in payment behaviours we readily adopted during the pandemic show no signs of going away. Attendees both want and expect to be able to make entirely contact-free or touchless transactions where human and surface contact is at a minimum. Cashless payments with RFID allow you to make transactions at a much further distance than contactless cards or mobile payments.
Summary
Cashless payments offer wide ranging benefits for event organisers to take control of their event. Moving beyond the benefits of touchless payments alone, cashless payment systems offer the ability for organisations to collect customer transaction data.
And this key difference between touchless and cashless payments, opens up a wide range of possibilities for businesses to connect, reward and engage with their attendees.
We're here to help! If you’d like to know more about how a cashless payment system could benefit your business, please get in touch.
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