Braintree Powers Cashless Payments For Eventbrite’s Events, Contextually And In Person

In contextual commerce, the play’s the thing. Or the concert. Or the game, for that matter.

In an announcement via blog post on Monday (Sept. 25), Braintree, the PayPal subsidiary, said that it has partnered with Eventbrite to bring seamless ticket purchase experiences to Facebook. At the same time, the company said it is expanding its physical world footprint to offer contactless RFID (radio frequency identification) bands enabling similarly cashless transactions at concession stands.

The moves, said the companies in the Monday announcement, will help drive an increase in sales at various types of events, utilizing Eventbrite’s user interface and Braintree’s payments platform.

As explained by the payments firm, contextual commerce, also known as distributed commerce, lets users purchase products and services upon discovery, as they use social media, for example. The data compiled by Eventbrite show that events that allow the full transaction to take place across Facebook results in twice the number of tickets being sold than might otherwise be seen. In addition, cashless offerings have led users to spend twice what carriers of hard currency might spend.

Other platform partnerships for Eventbrite tied to contextual commerce include Bandsintown (and the aforementioned Facebook) to streamline the ticket-buying process.

Braintree said that payments done through the contextual commerce experience are done in a secure manner, with users’ information stored in the Braintree Vault and via tokenization.  The tokens are granted to Eventbrite so transactions can be run “behind the scenes,” as the companies noted, despite the fact that the buying experience occurs on the websites of Facebook or Bandsintown. Eventbrite has estimated that it has sold more than one million tickets through distributed commerce.

Turning to RFID, Braintree said in its blog post that Eventbrite had wanted to create “an immersive, cashless experience” to let attendees at live events use wristbands to pay for merchandise and food without the need for physical cards. The wristbands, through RFID technology, let users tap and pay, using the same information leveraged to buy tickets.  Payments done through Braintree’s platform are also tokenized here.

Attendees surveyed said, at 84 percent, that the payment option boosted the overall experience, and 89 percent said they would use that cashless method again.