French Cashless Company Enters UK

Weezevent, which provides all of France’s Live Nation festivals among others with cashless solutions, is opening an office in Manchester as part of the company’s UK and Ireland launch.

– Weezevent – co-founders Sébastien Tonglet and Pierre-Henri Deballon

Ninety percent of France’s festivals are operating cashless, according to Weezevent data. Besides working with LN festivals such as the Paris editions of Download and Lollapalooza, the company claims to provide 60 of France’s 100 most attended festivals with its cashless technology, accumulating to a total of 80 percent market share.

The company also provides French football teams and holiday resorts throughout the world. Weezevent says, “In 2016 over £32m worth of transactions were successfully managed for around 3.5m unique attendees” via its technology.

Other numbers the company identified include the average purchase at festivals, which “has grown from £12 to £18 between 2015 and 2016, and “20 percent more attendees load money with a cashless wristband vs. a cashless card. 50 percent of cashless top-ups are made online on average, reducing the transaction fees that events would normally pay.”

Pierre Henri-Deballon and Sebastien Tonglet, who wanted to create solution for problems they faced during their own time as events organizers, founded Weezevent in 2008. Benjamin Garner, who previously worked for Ticketmaster, will head the UK operation.

Garner said Weezevent offered event organizers “a profitable solution that delivers remarkable benefits, and its actually less work and less cost to deploy compared with a cash festival. What’s more important is it improves the experiences of the fans, it’s safer and it reduces queues by making 100 percent of transactions contactless through the wristband with no upper limit on spend and no reliability on Internet or server connections. There’s also an easy option to split your payments with friends, if you’re buying something like a pitcher of beer or a bottle of wine.”