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Comment by eksemplar | Hacker News Reader

That’s festival payment done wrong, but cashless can be really great at festivals.

In Denmark we have a festival called Skanderborg festival, and they build both your ticket and your cashless payment into the festival bracelet.

You use the bracelet to pay everywhere, and you can add money to it a range of payment methods, from using a visa or similar in their app, to visiting one of the cash places where you can use an atm and then add funds to your bracelet.

It’s easily the best payment experience I’ve ever had at a festival.

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The best payment experience I’ve had is cash. I pay for what I need and when I leave the festival I can still use my “credits” hassle free anywhere I like.

Most of the cashless festivals return your unused "credits" pretty quickly after the festival.

The real problem comes when the system breaks down- which I've seen happen at plenty of festivals. At that point if cash isn't an option then commerce simply stops- screwing both vendor and customer alike.

Festivals I've been to will, say, require deposits of 100 peso increments and then the beers cost 80 pesos. And you can't get your money out.

Even if you could get your money back, you're still waiting at lines to recharge the bracelet. It's a joke.

With cash, you just come prepared and withdraw at any ATM long before the festival. Bracelets didn't solve any problem except disconnect the money handling event from the purchasing event so that you lose track of it, like how microtransactions are never priced in actual currency.

Why can’t you load the same amount of money on your bracelet before the festival as the cash you would be carrying?

If that’s because the festival organizers don’t let you retrieve your money easily or without a cost, that’s an issue with the festival management and not with the idea of digital money.

I’ve been to a festival which allowed us to withdraw money freely (I think they had some restrictions such as only 1 free withdrawal after the festival was over, and/or it had to be done within a week or so) but that allowed us to simply load in excess money so we never had to recharge. That worked really well for us.

> If that’s because the festival organizers don’t let you retrieve your money easily or without a cost, that’s an issue with the festival management and not with the idea of digital money.

The ability for poor implementations to exist is itself a strike against the general concept.

I think my problem with this comes down to ‘why the fuck are you bothering me with this?!’. We have perfectly valid working payment systems (cash, debit/credit), and for some reason you’ve decided that your festivals proprietary payment system is better?

Have to load money, have to retrieve money, and have zero insight into how much I’ve already spent without even more apps or interfaces.

> why the fuck are you bothering me with this?

Handling cash is a hassle in many ways:

1. It's slow. Obviously it is not slow in the best case when the customer throws in the exact change, but it is _really_ slow in the probably more typical case when the drunkard is at the counter and starts to dig into the pockets and find out if he has enough coins or when the seventh customer in the row wants to pay his ten cent lollipop with a hundred dollar bill and you run out of change.

2. It ties capital to keep sufficient amount of change in all of the booths.

3. It is difficult/expensive to manage securely and safely. You need to figure out how to stop personnel and other people stealing the money. Also your personnel likely feels more safe when they know that nobody can think that hey can come and try to steal money from you because you simply have none.

It's only slow because you are not used to paying with cash. Most payments are done with cash here, and the few people paying with cards cause small but noticeable delays. Counting cash is usually faster than handling a card reader, entering the PIN and whatnot. The odd drunkard or elderly customer is comparable to the odd technical problem, which usually takes longer to resolve.

I think it is also slow because the US does not require prices to be displayed including sales tax. If you pick something that has a marked price of $1, the total price will be somewhere between $1 and $1.10, depending on which state/city you are in, and what category of goods you are buying. Unless you are familiar with the exact tax code of your area, you won't be ready with exact change when paying. Even if you are, it means that you need to manage all the worthless pennies and nickels that result from paying with cash.

How is that faster than slapping my contactless card to the side of the card reader? 1 second and back to my wallet it goes.

Or if I'm feeling extra tech-y, I can do that with my watch or phone.

Where on earth do you live where things are this backwards?

1. Just don't accept any bill over €50 (this is common in shops too, no one expects to be paid for groceries or a beer at a festival in €100 bills). Most people are still pretty skilled in handling cash, although this is a declining skill. We've been doing cash transactions for centuries, we're still pretty good at it. The occasional slow-down is more than made up for by not having to charge or top-up your bracelet or what have you (you come prepared to the festival with cash).

2. A negligible amount for a vendor on a festival.

3. Not a problem on a festival. Booths tend to be manned by two persons because of other safety factors anyway, so staff stealing isn't an issue, and any organised criminality on a festival is usually limited to (relatively) low risk, high reward crime: pick-pocketing (smartphones in particular).

Oh, I agree it is a hassle for the merchant, but the fact that they’re making things more difficult for their customers remains the same.

And especially the ‘takes longer’ argument just shifts the time people are waiting to the charging station, or to their own homes, if they’re charging beforehand.

I think it’s fairly easy to make any change handling easy by making everything cost multiples of $1

also known as f-the-customer.

so use MasterCard/visa?

To add to that: because we all know that both parties know a working money system exists, then the most likely explanation for "why" becomes "because it is profitable for the festival host." The festival goer is tight to be naturally skeptical of sny alternative payment system (smart wristbands, "credit" cards, tickets/tokens).

Even if some transactions have extra friction such as ID checks for age-restricted purchases, the less intrusive solution is color coded "dumb paper" wristbands.

I suspect this allows the festival organizers to more easily take a cut from the merchants.

  have zero insight into how much I’ve already spent

Maybe that's a key motivator?

not with the idea of digital money.

If every single actual implementation of an idea is bad then maybe the idea wasn’t such a great one either.

Contactless payments with a regular credit card are as far as this idea needed to go, everything else is either a gimmick or a rip-off attempt.

> Most of the cashless festivals return your unused "credits" pretty quickly after the festival.

for a $5 processing fee

With a delay of their choosing, and a conversion factor for those of us that aren't locals. Cash has frictionless instant settlement, which is very hard to compete with as a centralized payment processor.

> frictionless

Except when they have no change (forcing you to find someone willing to change it or wait for them to do so) or refuse to accept a large bill. I often choose to use cash, but it's really not frictionless.

It is quite liberating. My family went cash only a couple of years ago. We spend less and tbh there isn’t much downside.

I have some friends who find that they budget much more successfully when they use only cash... they can see exactly what they have left this week or month.

Really? I find it to be the exact opposite. I budget much better when I can see what I'm spending money on rather than how much cash I have on-hand.

How do you buy online with cash only? I’m in the opposite situation, I pay everything with cards and I couldn’t be happier.

As much as I enjoy using cash, it isn't the best method. You have to carry it. You have to carry the change. The store had to have enough change. The store had to keep the pile of cash, and keep it safe. Then transfer it to my the bank at the end of the day or week or whatever. If you run out of cash on you, you have to figure out how to get more Cash had some nice features, like it is fairly anonymous. But it is far from perfect.

The best payment experience I've had is a credit card. It's harder to get robbed, I can pay everywhere with just a tap, I never need to remember to take out cash, tips are computed for me at my request, when I travel to many other countries I don't even need to get local currency, conversion happens automatically, and I'm not stuck with unused local currency when I leave.

Credit cards was how this all started in Sweden. Cash usage has been going down since the late 1990s, and the Swish thing is fairly new, we still use credit cards mostly, but swish is popular for smaller establishments or temporary events and such. You cant transfer money to your friends using a CC, but swish solves that. Its basically a national, private owned, Paypal, and that is the problem. Everybody uses it. My fiancee works at a school cafeteria, and Swish is the only accepted payment method. Not even credit cards work there.

Credit cards can be used virtually. It is easier to get robbed.

All your fraudulent credit card transactions will be cancelled if this happens. Not so with cash.

The trouble with cash is that you cannot really control high-school dropouts to charge $10 for a $2 beer without skimming a bit on the side. Hence this whole "here's some fake money that only works here" BS.

Just do an incorrect inventory. Some venues let workers do inventory and reporting. They are charging for the cup itself and that is how they determine sales. If a stack of cups disappears, there is no reconciliation.

Music venues have some interesting procedures, Alpine valley allows under an oz of weed to be brought in. They have college girls carrying backpacks with 40k in cash. There is an off duty cop directly behind though.

Can you elaborate on that second paragraph? I don't understand how those things are related to each other.

Why do they allow weed to be brought in? Why do they have college girls carrying cash in a backpack? Why so much cash? Why is there an off-duty cop following her around? Isn't an off-duty cop just an ordinary member of the public? If a cop is required shouldn't it be an on-duty cop? If it's somehow a trap to catch drug dealers, how is it meant to work? Why do they limit the amount of weed? And why are they trying to catch drug dealers at all?

Back in HS I worked at an amusement park for a summer. On a busy night, if I closed the booth, I'd be walking out the park's employee exit around 2am, through a somewhat busy and not-very-well-lit public area of the parking lot, and across to the admin offices with 30k+ in a plastic bag. That was not an uncommon amount for most of the non-token booths, and having 16-18 year old kids carrying it out of the park to the admin building was also common, since that was most of the park's work force.

I'd guess the "college girls carrying 40k in cash in a backpack" were employees carrying cash out from whatever business/booth they were running and taking it to their bank or head office or whatnot, and the "off-duty" cop behind them was there acting as a security guard; since that's a somewhat common side gig for cops, and in may places, they're still given all the power and authority an "on duty" cop has.

I don't get the connection to the weed (legal or otherwise, it has never been an interest of mine), but perhaps it explains the other bit.

Sorry the weed bit was unrelated. More of an example of the weird world of a music venue. They basically didn't care if it was for personal use, but they didn't want people that were clearly going to deal. It wasnt in the employee handbook, just kind of an unspoken rule.

As for the second part, off duty cops would moonlight as security guards. And the college girls could blend in. With the large crowds it was a way keep a low profile for making cash pickups from the dozen different beer/food stations. It's pretty smart. You would never think twice.

Pretty trivial to solve... sell drink tickets.

Isn't that just replacing cash with monopoly money?

No, you have the stoners pour beer and don’t let them handle cash. The people who handle cash don’t handle beer.

It’s a fairly typical internal control for that type of operation.

Generally, the purpose of the drink-ticket model is to ensure accurate sales reporting so that the festival or venue gets its full "cut".

Killer feature for me is that the same amount of physical mass can hold any amount of value.

Spending some cash sometimes increases the complexity of my pocket considerably, which is fine in practice and all, but just feels wrong to part of my brain.

Counterpoint, the best place to spend counterfeit money is a music festival....and then it gets passed down to you. I've picked up a half dozen counterfeits at music festivals. Sucks if you're not really paying attention.

Maybe a problem for you, never had that experience, nor do I know a single person who had that happen. I have many friends who go to festivals.

Every time I was at a festival there were some problems with ATMs not working, having no cash left etc.

I’d rather have the bracelet solution and don’t have to worry about having 100 coins in my pockets or losing my wallet.

Until you run out of cash on hand or it gets lost or stolen....

If it does, you go to the bank and get more cash.

If your card gets stolen however, you go to the bank, fill out a ton of forms, pay a fee for losing your card. Wait a few days for your new card to be delivered in the mail. And then, finally can you pay again. In the meanwhile, you are forced to pay with... cash! Which nobody accepts, because not having a debit card is socially unacceptable in our society.

I lost cards many times. Never been asked to pay a fee to get new card. No forms to fill out either. You just call them, tell them you need new card and they send it.

That's fine when you are at home - quick and painless.

But try losing your card overseas and see how you feel then... Especially if you have to put a stop on your card... Slow and very painful...

Unless you have a spare you'll be asking a friend to use Western Union for bridge finance.

But try losing your card overseas and see how you feel then...

Depends on the card. With Amex or Diners Club it’s not a problem.

Last time I had to ask for a new card, I had to wait for one month, I was happy to be have family members lending me cash.

> you go to the bank and get more cash.

Not sure which country you are talking about but the vast majority of people go to an ATM not the bank to get cash. You still need a debit card to get cash from an ATM.

In my country I can withdraw cash from the machine as I pay for shopping at the supermarket. And I'm not saying I withdraw cash then pay. I pay with the card AND the cash I withdrew comes out after the transaction is complete.

I haven't been to a bank for getting cash in 10 years. And as you say, ATMs are where you get cash.

We can do that here in the Mid-South, too. Got a story you might like. The customer, service desk which allows some cash back for free was packed. So, I had to go to register with something to buy. I tried to minimize the cost overall for a $500 withdraw at a company with $100 max per transaction. I hit their self checkout. I did five orders on the machine each with a single grape. Each order was one cent plus $100 cash back. Total transaction cost was five cents.

Self-checkout person was going "what the hell?" on that one. I also heard her talking to others about being hungry from break being delayed. I gave her the grapes after explaining what I was doing. She was happy, too. Probably did it herself at some point haha. Cashiers trip out to this day if I tell them about that whenever someone is buying a candy bar or something to get cash back. Occasionally, person in line leaves to get a grape. Just one. :)

Hence, if your wallet is stolen, you go to the bank, not the ATM.

But I actually assumed just the cash was gone. Either bank or ATM works fine in that situation.

No different to anything getting lost of stolen, and a bracelet is less likely to get lost or stolen.

> a bracelet is less likely to get lost or stolen.

You meant 'more', right?

We are in agreement. I was just stating some tradeoffs to physically carrying money that weren't mentioned.

What a novel idea

Those system don't have to follow the same regulations as banks and thus have many more ways to extra money that might not be as obvious. Money when converted to tokens and credit are not money in the eye of the law, even if it is used identically to money and is the only currency allowed.

If you are lucky they will return any unused credit automatic to your credit card without any fees. I would like to know how common that is and what kind of terms and conditions most such system has. My cynicism tells me its about as abusive as they can get away with but to be fair I have not tested it (since I either refuse to prepay on principle or only get the exact amount I have decided to already spend).

Some discussion about this on Jamie Zawinski’s blog two years ago (link via Facebook for Reasons):

https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jwz.o...

In Denmark we have a festival called Skanderborg festival, and they build both your ticket and your cashless payment into the festival bracelet.

Disney does that at Disneyland and Disney World in America: https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/plan/my-disney-experience/...

You can also use it to unlock you hotel room and to link to those photographs that are taken of you when you're on the rides.

The main difference being that Disney has multiple backup systems, including switching to a completely manual process in case their network or servers are offline.

I watched a presentation on this, and it's actually very interesting how they manage the ride experience so that even during a system outage they can still let people get on the rides.

Which happens so very very rarely. It’s an amazing process.

Is this presentation available online? I'd be very interested in watching it too.

Sorry, I saw Disney's CIO speak at a tech conference, but I don't believe it was recorded.

There’s a big club in NYC that does this (Brooklyn Mirage), except they link your credit card to the bracelet and you don’t have to load credit.

Makes the lines for drinks move so fast, it’s really outstanding.

Is it really much faster than contactless credit cards?

I can see value for certain specialist places, like a resort where everyone is wearing swimwear. Or a fetish club.

Contactless cards never took off in the US. I have 8 or 9 cards and don’t think any of them are contactless. So you can’t assume that everyone will have a contactless card and at that point you’re back to accepting swipes and cash.

By introducing a new payment method they can be sure that everyone has access to it and limit it to just the bracelets.

Do you have a pin or something to verify the payment? Would a stolen bracelet be useable?

How do they deal with tips?

You create a pin when you activate your card/wristband after walking in, yeah.

At the Mirage, tips work just like a credit card transaction would - the bartender has an iPad sitting in front of them and you choose preset options or enter a custom one.

Typically you place your order with the bartender, they'll ring it all up on the terminal, and by the time you've finished tapping your wristband on the reader and choosing a tip amount the bartender is done making your drinks. No hassle with pens and receipts and handing cards around or any of that.

Out of all the festivals, etc, I've been to where they do wristband-based payment instead of accepting cards directly, Avant Gardner / Brooklyn Mirage have the best setup IMO.

Apparently Billfold is the vendor: https://www.billfoldpos.com/

> No hassle with pens and receipts and handing cards around or any of that.

Is there normally hassle? In Europe, and I think this generalisation holds in the countries that commonly pay with a card, the terminal is either mounted on the bar facing the customer, or is portable and left in a similar position.

In any case, there's never a pen, receipts mostly go immediately in the bin unless someone is claiming expenses, and the card never leaves the customer's hand.

So it's little different from a contactless bracelet, except I trust Europay-MasterCard-Visa more han a POS supplier.

It helps that there are no tips. If the number on the screen looks reasonable, I don't touch the terminal at all.

The pen thing for signatures is a US phenomenon. Where we have debit cards (contactless and without the need for a PIN even for small amounts in a growing number of countries), they are stuck with a very slow, reluctant transition to PIN-and-chip; something the rest of us did in the late nineties.

The upside is that the US is at this point better at holding on to the principle of being able to use cash everywhere in addition to other payment options; something that is starting to become a problem in Europe.

Most places running newer POS terminals have switched to digital signatures on the screen, which is much nicer... but some bars (especially nightclubs where they don't want bright POS terminal screen shining in your face) still do paper receipts with pen signature, yeah.

Outside of nightlife and restaurants, I almost never deal with paper signatures anymore. Pretty much all retail, etc, does digital signatures and digital receipts, paper receipt upon request.

Its still pretty backwards compared to how most things credit card related work in Europe, but gets the job done and is indeed gradually getting better over here (and, as some of the other posts have mentioned, the saving grace if you don't want to deal with any of this is that cash is almost universally accepted).

> You create a pin when you activate your card/wristband after walking in, yeah.

I wonder how many make theirs 1234

Especially since you're drunk/high or will be very soon and won't be able to remember any more complex code.

A lot of POS systems capable of this don’t allow seqential or repeating digits.

Better than making it the same pin that your card is at least

In Estonia we had something similar but instead of letting us top up via app or card remotely, you had to stand in line at a booth and give them the money and then register your bracelet online to get the refund of any additional funds left on at the end of the process. I get what they were going for but it felt like a ton of friction to me, all to eliminate a single swipe at the payment terminal?

They wanted to also do that for M'era Luna in 2016 and I wasn't very much looking forward to that, hearing it in 2015 - might be because I read about them tracking your movement and having your payment history at the festival. Suddenly cash was really convenient again to me.

Yeah I agree. Was at sziget this summer and we could pay using our bank cards NFC and you don't have to input pin for payments under 15€. Also we could pay with festival's bracelet. This is THE BEST expirience. Easy for staff and for customers

Same with Sziget Festival in Budapest!

How do you get money off the bracelet?

In my (limited) experience, you go to their website, enter your bank account details and some days/weeks after the festival when they've processed everything they send it via Swift to your bank (if in EU, haven't tried for a foreign account)

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