There are several ways you as an event organizer can provide a payment solution for your event, and the expenses can vary between the various alternatives. In this blogpost we want to look at different alternatives for payment solutions, and illustrate how a well-functioning and affordable cashless system for your event is achievable.
Limited budget
As an ambitious event organizer with a limited budget, you might want to consider your
alternatives wisely when setting up your event. Not every event organizer has the budget to for fast and highly available WiFi at the event site, something credit/debit card terminals require. With WristCoin we want you as an event organizer to have more control over you own event, and give you the flexibility to be in charge of the payment solution yourself without paying transaction fees or for expensive WiFi or on-site support.
Alternative 1: Cash
One option could be to go for a cash-only solution for your event. Not the best option in the post COVID world but we’ll examine it. People tend to be quick to complain about cash management, but few can actually give an accurate estimate on how much it is actually costing them. Cash management costs arise from having to collect money from the different stations/booths at the event, count the money, auditing, and quite importantly, the cost of the Cash-In-Transit (CIT) service to transport cash back and forth between the bank and the event. Not to mention the risk that temporary vending staff and bartenders steal cash proceeds before they’re counted.
The question here is: how much as a percentage of collected revenue is spent on cash management? An exact number for that obviously will obviously depend on the size of the event, the number of booths and several other factors, however, one thing is for sure; it will impose an element of risk that comes with cash handling as well as it requires the staff to be 100% trustworthy.
Alternative 2: Go with EMV terminals (Credit and Debit cards)
Implementing EMV terminals with the ability to tap your regular credit or debit card sounds like a good alternative. But in reality, even in the US and Canada, the tap feature (contactless payment) is not even close to universal adoption (with a card or a phone). Some customers for fear of fraud ask the bank to actually disable the contactless technology in the card. Other customers don’t use it because they simply don’t know it exists or don’t know how to use it. The behavior has been slow to take hold since many merchants still don’t have contactless “tap enabled” terminals. Even today in the US, a pen and paper based signature is still required for most credit card purchases since most customers are still accustomed to swiping the mag-stripe, a decades old technology that the many customers still use when paying with a credit card. Exchanging a pen with all previous and future patrons introduces unneeded contact that can spread COVID-19. Even in places where signatures are a thing of the past such as in Canada, for added safety many customers still insist on inserting the chip and entering the PIN – something that is not only creates slow service speed, it also introduces contact that can spread COVID. In brief, tapping or going contactless is still not universal or ubiquitous in open loop payments. Add to this the high fees that credit card processing entails (interchange fee, transaction fee, settling fee, statement fee, a fee for paying the fee, etc..) along with the cost of the data connections needed and it’s a costly solution.
Alternative 3: Go cashless and go with WristCoin!
Last but not least, a closed loop cashless solution could be a wise choice for your event. WristCoin can address markets and clients that the competition cannot because our solution can scale down as easily as it can scale up. Many competitors provide a solution where a scale down is difficult, allowing less flexibility for smaller events. With our 100% guaranteed underwriting of offline transactions, you’ll never break the bank to provide fast WiFi for the event site that the other guys require. Since WristCoin does not take any transaction fees, you’ll have a slick solution that keeps more of the profits in your pocket. Contact us today for a free demo and quote.
