Dan McAuley
Accepting Apple Pay and Google Pay for tickets, donations, merch, and add-ons at your shows can be a game-changer.
Customers have been able to pay by tapping their phones at Spektrix-powered box office counters for years, but the ability to accept Apple Pay and Google Pay on your website is something we know you’ve been clamoring for. The good news is that this is an exciting part of our integrated payment processing feature, Spektrix Payments.
In this blog, we’ll dive into the details of what exactly these payment methods look like with Spektrix Payments and how they can benefit your organization.
What are Apple Pay and Google Pay?
Apple Pay and Google Pay are modern payment methods that store cards digitally to streamline transactions, both online and in-person. Take a peek at what this will look like on your website in this minute-long demo:
As you can see, it just takes a quick click to pay – no need to go find and enter your credit card information.
Meanwhile, to use Apple Pay or Google Pay in person, customers just tap their phone, smartwatch, or other enabled device to the payment terminal for a lightning-fast transaction.
Why should theaters, live events, and arts organizations accept Apple Pay and Google Pay?
Eliminate friction to grow your revenue and your audiences
How do you get audiences through the door, and how do you get them back?
These questions are likely as top-of-mind for you as they are for us. In fact, the recent Tomorrow’s Audience research conducted by Indigo-Ltd in partnership with Spektrix highlighted how critical it is to bring first-time attendees into your audience. Naturally, you don’t want any barriers preventing or slowing down those customers from making a purchase.
Apple Pay and Google Pay are really exciting in this sense because they remove many of the steps that can come between having the idea to go to a show and actually buying tickets.
With a traditional payment method, customers will usually need to:
- Wait until they are in a place where they can securely and easily use their card at the same time as a phone/computer
- Go find their wallet or purse (if it’s even nearby)
- Pull out their credit or debit card
- Manually enter in a long string of numbers
- Locate and enter the expiration date and CVV code
- Uh oh – if one number is off, they have to enter it again
- Once finished, put everything back when they’re done
Whew!
But with mobile payment methods, this becomes a lot simpler. Their payment info is securely available via their own device alongside every other online store they frequent. There’s no need to enter their card details into your Spektrix system or to have them already saved there.
A customer might be walking, on the train, or in a waiting room, and they can make the purchase go through without having to do a juggling act.
This means that customers have fewer reasons for why they can’t purchase the event ticket right now. And, because the transactions happen so quickly and so easily, it means less time between receiving that marketing email your team sent and having tickets in hand.
In other words, they won’t have to think twice about it.
The bottom line is that the smoother and quicker you can get your transaction process, the more conversions you’re making – adding up to more people coming through your doors and more money flowing into your organization.
Give your customers what they want
How many times a day does someone ask if you accept Apple Pay? We keep a close eye on the questions people are asking about event ticketing, and we know it's a regularly googled question for theaters.
Modern customers across all industries have come to expect the ability to use mobile payments for anything they purchase, from stores to restaurants. Your organization should be no different.
In fact, TechReport reports that there were “roughly 45.4 million users of Apple Pay in the United States alone in 2023, with an estimated one in every five US citizens using the service,” and Adyen cites that “over 29% of Canadians [have] completed a purchase using a digital or mobile wallet.”
And when any of those 45.4 million users come to you, you want to be able to accept their payment in a snap.
Craft a smoother audience experience all around
One of our favorite aspects about this feature is how smooth it makes things for your audiences.
Even setting aside the revenue benefits explored above, we’re hosts at heart and simply want any visit made to your organization to feel good. The ease of Apple Pay and Google Pay means that the focus can be on the art and the experience you’re producing, not the act of paying for it.
Plus, with the capability to tap and go, customers need only keep their phone (or even a smartwatch) on their person. They can move comfortably and freely about your space, while easily being able to purchase anything they need in just the blink of an eye.
Your next steps to accept Apple Pay and Google Pay
Yes, you can (and should!) enable your customers to use Apple Pay and Google Pay for event tickets, donations, and any other purchases online. To add these payment methods to your website, you’ll need:
- Spektrix Payments as your payments provider
- Express Checkout enabled (most Spektrix users will already have this)
- A few lines of code added to your website by your web developer to update your iframe tags
Our team is eager to support you in any way we can. Get in touch, and we’d be happy to walk you through all the details.
Dan McAuley is a Senior Product Owner at Spektrix.