Hello!
Internet of Things is out there slowly making a hugely connected network. Among all the industries that are impacted, I believe payments is the one with the highest expectations and rewards. The current trend for marketing teams all over big corporations is: remove the gap between the will and the purchase. As soon as a client wants something you must be there to provide and make it all easy to happen.
You see why payments are key in the process: they represent the final step for a client to get the good or service you are selling. Cash has done it somehow ok-ish for the last 3000 years but there are plenty of situations where it is not working or it is merely a poor experience. In particular I'd like to go through a huge market where this trend can be BIG: music festivals! In the UK only it is a 3Bn market and steadily growing year after year.
Charging an IoT bracelet with 20€ before going into Sonar, a HUGE techno festival
Why IoT payments are powerful in music festivals?
- faster queues, you pre-charge your bracelet at home or at the entrance
- better health control, not everyone wants to drink himself to stupor so the festival could be more responsible about it and set some push warnings
- better spending analysis, real-time spending is very valuable data, both for the consumer and for the organizer
- better security, you can hide your wallet as deep as you like since a bracelet will do it all for you, with some fantasy (not even too much) the bracelet can be triggered by your fingerprint
- easier fund raising for NGOs, festival sometimes sponsor NGOs, a very very very easy way to do so is to collect all leftover in the pre-charged bracelets
- cool gadgets, the ones I've seen were just bracelets, but it is easy to think about some cool gadgets that can personalize the festival experience according to the theme/mood: rings, piercings, even tattoos can be good (yes, henna QR codes could be quite cool)
Finally this is me and two friends ready to have a blast at Sonar festival!
To pay you just go to the bar tender, ask for your beer and walk away happy. It never took me more than 10 minutes to get the drinks.. if anyone of you had experience in a large festival, you will know 10 minutes is just a DREAM. The kind of experience you give to the public is extremely important and even with a simple implementation, basic bracelet, it had a tremendous positive impact on the overall festival. Sonar was great, Justice made an herculean opening (in techno we trust!) but this is topic for another blog entry.. (:
Please let me know if you have security concerns or other ideas on how to use IoT in music festivals!