Belgian RFID & Cashless Provider Playpass Secures $2.2 Million In Funding

Screenshot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUqnvaPEvic – Playpass
A festivalgoer checking her balance at Lollapalooza Berlin

RFID and cashless service provide Playpass has secured €1.9 million ($2.2 million) from Newlon Investments in its latest round of capital funding.

The company claims to have delivered its technology solutions to more than 600 events in 19 countries across five continents, and processing over €50 million in payment transactions involving more than four million ticket-holders since being founded in Belgium in 2012. 

Its client list includes Live Nation, AEG Presents, IMG, Mojo Concerts, Ticketmaster and PayPal.

Playpass intends to use the new capital to further strengthen its core offering, build enhanced data and business intelligence services, and accelerate it global expansion. The company’s founders also want to bring the Playpass technology into new verticals beside festivals.

– The Playpass directors
Pictured left to right: Ron Schuermans (CFO), David de Wever (CEO & co-founder), Dale Hofkens (CTO & co-founder)

Co-founder and CEO David de Wever, explained: “We will expand in two key areas. Firstly within the live music, events and festival sector, we will continue to develop innovative technology, expanding our own local operational teams across our international territories as well as extending relationships with strong local partners acting as resellers or licensees.

“Secondly, we will look to accelerate our success in other sectors, including indoor arenas (Antwerp’s 20,000 capacity Sportspaleis scan more than a million tickets a year with our system) and sports clubs (most recently at RSC Anderlecht, where supporters can now use their season tickets to make cashless payments). 

“In terms of enhancing our services, we will be focusing increasingly on harnessing the power of data in new and ground-breaking ways to deliver unique value to our clients. This enables us to optimise the many exciting opportunities in front of us.”

The company sponsoring the $2.2 million is Newlon Investments B.V., base in Amsterdam, Netherlands, an independent venture capital fund specializing in b2b technology providers.

Newion Partner Mathijs de Wit commented: “While researching the investment opportunity it became clear that Playpass’ customers talk extremely positively about their technology. 

“Additionally, we were impressed by the team, their ability to deliver and we look forward to working alongside them, to make Playpass the dominant market leader in its space.”