Contactless payment a win/win

The Foolproof team headed to the Isle of Wight festival last month to test out the idea of contactless PayPass™ wristbands for MasterCard®.

The concept is amazing; a preloaded wristband that festival goers can load with money prior to and during an event. All payments are then made via the wristband, via a simple contactless payment at the terminal.

There’s potentially a big win/win for both festival goers and festival organisers out of the idea of cashless festivals, so we were really interested in what we would find. As a team, we were responsible for evaluating the customer experience of people in the VIP area of the festival using the wristbands, compared to more traditional means of payment, recording perceptions prior to and after usage.

We used a combination of pre registration questionnaires, quantitative surveys conducted via iPad in the VIP tent and qualitative depth interviews – and the responses were fascinating. However, what was important to me on this occasion was actually getting to see people’s customer experience at the bar and cafe area and then talking to them firsthand about their experiences.

Although I have long been an advocate of customer insight and gathering feedback through design process, there is nothing quite like seeing it and hearing it first hand to give you a thorough understanding of user behaviour. I found it thoroughly riveting interviewing users over the two days and, given that I interviewed roughly 60 people in that time, it was fairly intense.

There is nothing more exciting to me than watching new technologies being adopted especially at such a conceptual stage in development – I can’t wait to see what happens in this space.

Read the full story: NFC wristbands enhance the festival experience.

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