Mysteryland might be one of the first music festivals to bring you an all cashless venue in the United States, but this practice is not new to the festival community as a whole. For roughly three years Ultra Music Festival in Korea has been using this advanced technology.This has allowed festival goers a new freedom by presenting them with the option to leave their cash at home. Counter.Point Festival in Kingston Downs, Georgia was also among the first multi-day festivals to provide a cashless option. Unlike Mysteryland this year though, Count.Point isn’t exclusively cash-free. With electronic music festivals, it only seems natural that implementing technology that allows attendees to be free of their wallets and worries. A wristband, provided by the festival, is what allows those attending to be free from having to hit the ATM.
[quote style=”1″ author=”Mysteryland Official Site”]You can only access the festival and camping grounds by scanning your wristbands at the entrances // You can buy everything with your wristband. Top up now, or at our festival top up points. Money you don’t use gets refunded! // Everything at Mysteryland is priced in our currency, Birdie Bucks. For every $100 you put on your before the festival, you will receive 5 extra birdie bucks![/quote]
Mysteryland 2014 will make itself one of the first cash-free festival experiences in the U.S.
The wristbands are fitted with an RFID chip that allows it to talk to various pieces of technology throughout the festival. Squamish Valley Music Festival in British Columbia, has also put this chip to use in their all cashless festival wristbands. It will be interesting to see if Mysteryland will also allow users to update their Facebook status’ with their wristbands, as does Squamish Valley Music Festival’s.
With benefits like the wristband brought to you by partners ID&T and Intellitix (acquired by SFX Entertainment last October), it’s hard to argue with the pros of being cashless. Mysteryland, as well as Counter.Point Festival, has definitely set a precedent for other music festivals in the United States to at least provide a cash-free option. We can only hope that our own Paradiso Festival will adopt this technology in the near future to help keep festival goers in the Pacific Northwest moving out of lines, and into enjoying the music they love!
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