The Isle of Wight Festivals introduced a new technology to their festival. This year, festival goers were able to make cashless transaction to buy their food and drinks for the first time. How? Thanks to the RFID wristbands. ID&C provided these festival wristband and they were also used to gain entrance to the festival.
Andy Gratton, one of the Isle of Wight Festival food traders, said that paying with the wristbands is much faster than paying by cash or traditional chip and pin. It’s also much more convenient. Festival goers now have their entry ticket, festival ID and wallet all in one wristband. Gratton said he things that this will become more and more popular.
When ordering their festival tickets, ticket holders could choose to upgrade their standard wristbands to the RFID ones and link them to their debit or credit card. On the festival site, a number of top-up points were dotted around and some of the vendors accepting cashless payments could also tell punters how much money there was left on their wristbands. Unused credit was automatically refunded to their card after the festival.
Steve Daly, Operations Director of ID&C, said that the RFID wristbands were trialed on the festival last year. They were given to a limited number of VIPs and it was a big success. That’s why they decided to roll out the technology to a wider festival audience this year.
To make the wristbands available for the festival audience, the organizers of the Isle of Wight Festival worked partnered with ID&C, MasterCard UK, Vodafone, Central catering and IVS. Daly said that there are a lot of festivals throughout the UK and even Europe and the United States that are adopting this technology. And all of these festivals are using the wristbands as the intermediary to put the RFID technology on. All of them say that is gives a better festival experience to their festival goers.
ID&C is the company that supplied the first ever fabric wristband to Glastonburry in June 1999. And to date, they already supplied over 1m RFID wristbands across the world.
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