Barclaycard and Green 4 Solutions have announced a partnership to offer sports and leisure industry an integrated wearable ‘one-stop-shop’ device.
Trials of the bPay contactless band at Pride in London and Barclaycard Presents British Summer Time in Hyde Park led to engagement with the young generation, a strong spend outside events and an impressive number of registrations. Building on the successful trial, Barclaycard plans to use the partnership with Green 4 Solutions to explore possibilities for the technology in a new sector.
Peter Oliver, Co-Founder and Director at Green 4 Solutions said:
“Wearable payment devices have shown that they can improve customer experience by both speeding up transactions and giving better insights that allow organisations to better understand their customers’ behaviour.
“This then becomes the lifeblood of future marketing strategies. With better insight into fans’ behaviour and the ability to utilise our CRM technology to reward fan loyalty, we can ensure that our communication with fans improves their match day experience by making it easier and more tailored to them.”
Barclaycard plans to work with sports and leisure venues to facilitate contactless customer payments both in and outside venues and stadiums and to allow customers to participate in experiential activities – social media check-ins, for example, and competitions – all in one user-friendly product.
Working together, Green 4 Solutions and Barclaycard will look into the logistics of combining customer relationship solutions and payment into an integrated wearable device, the bPay band, that they can use both on and off-site to improve customers’ experience.
Experts in the leisure, sports and entertainment businesses, Green 4 Solutions will support Barclaycard in facilitating the building by of closer relationships between customers and venues by integrating bPay customer behavioural data into customer relationship management solutions.
The enhanced customer proposition will give sports clubs and leisure venues a better understanding of customer preferences, helping to foster loyalty and maximise revenues, offering a single solution for corporate events, data capture, refreshments and merchandise.
Mike Saunders, Managing Director for Digital Consumer Payments at Barclaycard commented on the increasing popularity of mobile payment devices:
“… they’re a fast, secure and easy way to pay. Consumers tell us they want more than one function from their wearables; payment capability is just one ingredient;, there are a wide range of potential applications – access, loyalty, branding, affiliation and recognition.
“We can help sports clubs access new data sources to gain valuable insights into their customers’ behaviour by providing an integrated payment and ticketing solution. This will help venues looking to understand their customers better, grow loyalty and maximise revenues through a joined-up approach to technology.”
Customers will benefit from the convenience: it’s quick and easy to pay in venues using their bPay band (which also displays their team colours) – and the convenience is extended beyond the venue: they can tap and pay wherever they see the contactless symbol in over 300, 000 locations across the UK.
Barclaycard is in discussions with a range of partners with a view to exploring the launch of a bPay solution to drive better user experience and improved insight capabilities for venues and clubs.
