Discover why Apple Pay and Google Pay for tickets matter for faster checkouts, higher conversions, and smoother audience experiences.
Accepting Apple Pay and Google Pay for tickets, donations, merchandise, and add-ons at your events can be a game-changer for your organisation and your audience relationships.
Audience members have been able to pay by tapping their phones at Spektrix-powered counters for years, but the ability to accept Apple Pay and Google Pay on your website is something we know you have been waiting for. The good news is that this sits within our integrated payment processing solution, Spektrix Payments, connecting payments with the audience insight and engagement tools you already rely on.
If you became a Spektrix user before 2024, you will need to switch your payments provider to Spektrix Payments in order to accept Apple Pay and Google Pay on your website.
In this blog, we will explore how Apple Pay and Google Pay work with Spektrix Payments, and how they can support your long-term audience growth and financial sustainability.
What are Apple Pay and Google Pay?
Apple Pay and Google Pay are modern digital wallet payment methods that store cards securely on a device, helping you streamline online and in-person transactions.
It takes just one quick click to pay, with no need for audience members to search for and enter their card information.
Meanwhile, to use Apple Pay or Google Pay in person, audience members simply tap their phone, smartwatch, or other enabled device on the payment terminal for a fast, secure transaction.
Why should arts, culture, & in-person experience organisations accept Apple Pay and Google Pay for tickets?
Eliminate friction to grow revenue and deepen audience relationships
How do you get audiences through the door, and how do you get them back?
These questions are likely as front of mind for you as they are for the Spektrix team. 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 audience members into your audience. Naturally, you do not want any barriers preventing or slowing down those audience members from making a purchase.
Apple Pay and Google Pay are exciting in this sense because they remove many of the steps that can come between having the idea to attend an event and actually buying tickets.
With a traditional online payment method, audience members 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 or computer
- Find their wallet or purse (if it is even nearby)
- Pull out their credit or debit card
- Manually enter a long string of numbers
- Locate and enter the expiry date and CVV code
- Uh oh – if one number is off, they have to enter it again
- Once finished, put everything back when they are done
With mobile payment methods, this becomes much simpler. Their payment details are securely available on their own device alongside every other online store they use. There is no need to enter their card details into your Spektrix system or to have them already saved there.
An audience member might be walking, on the train, or in a waiting room, and they can complete the purchase without a juggling act.
This means that audience members have fewer reasons not to purchase the event ticket right now. Because these transactions happen so quickly and so easily, there is less time between receiving that marketing email your team sent and having tickets in hand.
In other words, they will not have to think twice about it.
The bottom line is that the smoother and quicker your transaction process, the more conversions you are likely to see – adding up to more people coming through your doors and more income flowing into your organisation over time.
What’s more, this frictionless checkout comes with no additional risk for you. Apple Pay, in particular, is probably the most effective method to reduce payment fraud and chargebacks whilst improving your customers‘ experience.
Give your audience the payment options they expect
When Viva Blackpool started accepting Apple Pay, they immediately saw customers making use of it. In the first few weeks:
- 19% of all their online sales used Apple Pay
- 49% of their online sales from Apple devices used Apple Pay
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 is a regularly googled question for theatres.
Modern customers across all industries have come to expect the ability to use mobile payments for anything they purchase, from stores to restaurants. Your organisation should be no different.
In fact, a report by EMARKETER finds that 30% of UK customers have recently purchased products online using Apple Pay. They also forecast that „by 2027, half of all ecommerce payments in the UK will be made via a digital wallet.“
When any of those audience members come to you, you want to be able to accept their payment quickly, confidently, and in ways that feel familiar to them.
Craft a smoother experience across every touchpoint
One of our favourite aspects of this feature is how much smoother it makes things for your audience, from first click to in-person experience.
Even setting aside the revenue benefits explored above, we are hosts at heart and want every visit to your organisation to feel good. The ease of Apple Pay and Google Pay for tickets means that the focus can be on the art and the experience you are producing, not the act of paying for it.
Plus, with the capability to tap and go, audience members need only keep their phone (or even a smartwatch) with them. They can move comfortably and freely around your space, while easily purchasing anything they need in just a few seconds.
Your next steps to accept Apple Pay and Google Pay for tickets
Yes, you can (and should) enable your audience 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 will need:
- Spektrix Payments as your payment processing provider
- Express Checkout enabled in your Spektrix system (most Spektrix users will already have this)
- A few lines of code added to your website by your web developer to update your online booking iframe tags
The Spektrix team is eager to support you. Get in touch, and we will be happy to walk you through the details and help you connect Apple Pay and Google Pay to your wider audience engagement strategy.
