PlayPass has secured €1.9 million (£1.7m) in its latest round of capital funding.
The injection is from Newion Investments, an independent venture capital fund focusing on b2b technology providers. It will enable further growth at PlayPass, which specialises in RFID and cashless payment technology for the live events industry,
Since being founded in 2012, PlayPass has delivered solutions to more than 600 events in 19 countries. Its client list includes Live Nation, AEG Presents, IMG, Mojo Concerts, Ticketmaster and PayPal. It has processed over €50m (£45m) in payment transactions involving more than four million ticket-holders.
The new capital will allow PlayPass to build enhanced data and business intelligence services and accelerate global expansion, as well as replicating its festival partnerships in other vertical markets.
PlayPass co-founder and CEO David de Wever said: “This capital will fuel our growth and advance our progress to expand and become the global market leader in access and contactless payment solutions for the events market.”
He added: “We will expand in two key areas. Firstly within the live music, events and festival sector, we will continue to develop innovative technology, expanding our own local operational teams across our international territories as well as extending relationships with strong local partners acting as resellers or licensees.”
“Secondly we will look to accelerate our success in other sectors, including indoor arenas (Antwerp’s 20,000 capacity Sportspaleis scan more than a million tickets a year with our system) and sports clubs (most recently at RSC Anderlecht, where supporters can now use their season tickets to make cashless payments).
“In terms of enhancing our services, we will be focusing increasingly on harnessing the power of data in new and ground-breaking ways to deliver unique value to our clients. This enables us to optimise the many exciting opportunities in front of us.”
Newion partner Mathijs de Wit said: “While researching the investment opportunity it became clear that PlayPass’ customers talk extremely positively about their technology. Additionally, we were impressed by the team, their ability to deliver and we look forward to working alongside them, to make Playpass the dominant market leader in its space.
The previous three funding rounds brought in €6m (£5.4m), including a minority acquisition by Swiss digital payments group Sandpiper in 2015.
PHOTO: (L-R)Ron Schuermans (CFO), David de Wever (CEO & co-founder), Dale Hofkens (CTO & cofounder)
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