Apple may have found a new venue for the promotion of its biometric mobile payment platform: concerts. The company trialed a new order-ahead system at the recent BottleRock music festival near San Francisco, allowing Apple Pay users to order a drink from a concession stand, pay for it, and then just walk up and grab it via a dedicated Apple Pay lane.
In theory, the idea is that Apple Pay would offer concertgoers a much faster way to order and pay for their drinks, doing it all through their mobile devices and confirming the transactions with fingerprint or face scans. With lineups at concert concession stands being what they are, this would be a much-appreciated bit of convenience – and that’s certainly how it felt to an enthusiastic TechCrunch writer who tried it out at BottleRock.
Of course, a big part of that experience was probably the dedicated Apple Pay lane. Apple Pay’s user base is still pretty small in terms of mainstream adoption, so as long as there’s a dedicated lane for people paying with the platform, it’s going to move a lot faster than the one for standard payments. Still, eschewing cash always helps to make lines move faster, and as adoption of mobile payments increases, that’s going to hurry things along at concert concession stands. Plus, as the night goes on and the drinks keep coming, those who rely on mobile payments will probably appreciate that they don’t have a wallet to lose.
Sources: TechCrunch, 9to5Mac
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