RSC Anderlecht flaunts cashless experience

Article posted by Coliseum, July 25^th, 2019

Image: RSC Anderlecht

Royal Sporting Club (RSC) Anderlecht declared its decision to go cashless was a great success. The Belgian football club said it recorded increases sales of 35 percent and resulted in improved fan engagement through its cashless feature, using an NFC card-based system provided by PlayPass.

As a key part of its wider digital transformation strategy, the club underwent a rigorous tender process to find a cashless payment provider that could integrate seamlessly with its mobile application and CRM systems to enable a digital season ticket with powerful loyalty mechanisms.

“We didn’t want a collection of suppliers gathered around, but separate to, our platform. The PlayPass ethos is perfectly aligned to this model and has proven a great ongoing success,” said Gert Boutsen, Head of Finance & Administration, RSC Anderlecht.

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The NFC tag embedded in the club’s season ticket card is linked digitally to the individual, allowing customer profiling and personalized communications. The PlayPass system routes every purchase transaction through the club’s proprietary CRM system, providing RSC Anderlecht with visibility on their fans’ consumption patterns, cross-referenced with their other online and offline interactions with the club.

This data and instant feedback has facilitated on-going operational fine-tuning to continually optimize revenue and fan experience, and allowed the Club to offer effective incentives to encourage its visitors to spend more time in the stadium on match days.

PlayPass fulfilled the clubs requirement that the RFID system be used as a powerful data collection tool. The innovative digital transformation provides the club with data bringing a logical scientific basis for making decisions advising commercial partnerships, marketing, fan offers, staffing and retail logistics.

Fans have the choice of topping up their funds remotely in advance, via the mobile app, or in the stadium at top-up-stations before making their purchases in the stadium.

PlayPass installed 65 cashless fixed point of sale (POS) terminals at bars and retail outlets, with a further 130 mobile POS, which completed over 300,000 transactions during the season fans and retailers gave excellent feedback from the outset. The team also installed 45 fixed and 15 mobile readers at top-up stations.

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