Lollapalooza To Test Out Cashless Payment System
By Chuck Sudo in News on Jul 2, 2014 8:30PM
Lollapalooza will try out a system at this year’s festival where attendees can pay for concessions using a cashless payment system. Dubbed Lolla Cashless, organizers for the festival will send out radio frequency identification (RFID)-enabled wristbands this week. These wristbands can be registered online with one’s credit or debit card information.
All of the food and drink vendors at Lollapalooza will have point-of-sale systems set up during the festival. When you buy something all you have to do is tap the wristband to the POS pad, type in a PIN number and voila!, your card will be charged for the purchase. As an added bonus, the wristbands are supposed to work offline, which comes in handy in Grant Park where 4G and WiFi service can be spotty, at best.
Those of you who have had to deal with Ventra nightmares may be reading this and wondering how smoothly this program will run. Patrick Dentler, marketing director at Lollapalooza producer C3 Presents, hopes Lolla Cashless will be adopted by other major music festivals.
But it isn’t completely altruistic. Lollapalooza is clearly hoping technology-savvy millennials will embrace the wristbands, giving the festival’s sponsors greater insight into how this highly coveted marketing demographic spends its money and how they use other technology like smartphones at events.
Here’s a hint: selfies.