Clubs and events
Cashless payment system for your festival: how to choose
Tokens, a cashless card or wristband, bank cards at the bar or credit on the ticket: how to choose a cashless payment system for your festival.
· 5 min read
Your youth club runs an open-air festival: twelve hundred visitors, three bars, a chip stand and a cocktail bar. Last year everything ran on tokens. At eight o'clock there was a twenty-minute queue at the token booth, and at three in the morning the treasurer was still counting plastic coins. This year the committee wants a cashless payment system for the festival. But which one?
What kinds of cashless festival payments are there?
Roughly four. They differ mainly in what your visitor holds in their hand and where the money sits.
| System | What the visitor has | Where the money sits |
|---|---|---|
| Tokens or drink vouchers | Cardboard or plastic coins | Cash in your till |
| Card or phone at the bar | Their own bank card | With you, via the card terminal |
| Chip in a wristband | A wristband you hand out | Depends on the supplier |
| Credit on the ticket | The ticket they already have | With you, via your payment provider |
Tokens are familiar, but they aren't really cashless: the cash just moves from the bar to the token booth. A card terminal at every bar works well, but every pint becomes a card payment of a few seconds, and at the busiest moment every second counts. A chip in a wristband is fast, but you rent or buy the wristbands and the readers, and someone has to hand them out and top them up.
Credit on the ticket uses what is already there: the QR code on the ticket, on paper or in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. No wristband needed.
Five questions before you choose
- Where does your visitors' money sit? With you, or with a platform that pays it out after the festival? The first is simpler: no waiting, no middleman.
- What does it cost? A fixed amount per event, or a percentage of everything topped up? At a successful festival that makes a big difference.
- How does a visitor top up? Only at a top-up point on site, or also in advance, at home, or together with their ticket? Every dollar or euro topped up in advance is one person fewer in the queue.
- What happens to what's left over? Does your visitor get it back, and how? Anyone who doesn't get a clear answer will top up less next time.
- What if the network drops? In a field with a thousand phones, that is not a theoretical question.
How credit on the ticket works
With cashless payments in Passavo, the balance is tied to your visitor's ticket, within that one event.
- Top up when buying. Anyone who buys a ticket online sees Put credit on your pass at checkout. The credit is part of the same payment, without VAT, and goes on the first ticket of the order.
- Top up online themselves. The wallet pass and the ticket email carry a Top up balance link. Your visitor adds money from their phone, even when they are already on site.
- Top up at your top-up point. A volunteer scans the ticket, picks an amount and takes payment: cash, by card terminal or, in Belgium, with Bancontact Pay.
- Pay at the bar. The order is rung up as usual; your bar volunteer scans the pass and the amount comes off. If there isn't enough credit, the sale doesn't go through.
- Claim it back afterwards. Whatever is left, your visitor claims back themselves with the Claim back remaining balance button on their pass or in their email, within the window you choose per event. Money paid online goes back the same way; cash top-ups become a bank transfer.
The money comes in through your payment provider, into your account. It never passes through Passavo.
And without a network?
For till devices that take payments offline, you set a cap per event: how much one device may take from one pass without a network. When the network comes back, everything is booked exactly once, and anything that went too far shows up in your report. Read also how to scan tickets without a network.
A worked example
Take the festival above: 1,200 paid tickets, and an average of 25 euros topped up per visitor. That's 30,000 euros in credit.
A made-up system that keeps 5 percent of everything topped up would cost you 1,500 euros — and more, the better your festival does.
With Passavo you pay a fixed amount per event, based on the number of paid tickets for that event:
| Paid tickets for the event | Price per event |
|---|---|
| up to 250 | €49.00 |
| up to 1,000 | €99.00 |
| above that | €149.00 |
No percentage comes off the credit. On the Pro plan, cashless is included for all your events. Your payment provider's fees for online and card payments still apply, as with any system: see which payment provider to choose.
Where to start
- Set up your drinks and food as products, with the right range at each bar: see selling at the bar.
- Turn on cashless for your event and pick the tier that matches your expected ticket sales.
- Read in the manual how the bar balance works, including the claim-back window and the offline cap.
Running a party or a fundraising dinner first? Read cashless at the bar: the same system, on a smaller scale.
