“Revelers at this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival will be able to pay for food, drinks, merchandise and more with their iPhone and Apple Watch thanks to a partnership with Square, which is supplying on-site vendors with Apple Pay-compatible mobile card readers,” AppleInsider reports.
“Square, Coachella’s official point of sale provider, is bringing its new Contactless and Chip Reader payment device to the festival, meaning iPhone and Apple Watch owners with compatible hardware can leave their wallets at home,” AppleInsider reports. “Coachella is further obviating the need for physical wallets by building iBeacon support into its official iOS app. The festival first adopted Apple’s proximity-aware iBeacon technology in 2014 to send out location-based push notifications and other information to iPhone users.”
“This year, iBeacon transmitters will be used to dish out ‘Surprise and Delight’ rewards to attendees who link their American Express card with the official Coachella app,” AppleInsider reports. “Based on where they are on festival grounds, attendees can win a handful of prizes, which will be revealed in the near future.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Ah, the convenience of Apple Pay! Enjoy, Coachella goers!
With Costco dumping them, who uses American Express anymore?
It was going so well until the bit where it mentioned “to attendees who link their American Express card with the official Coachella app,”
I despise those sort of arrangements. When I pay for something, I choose the means of payment and I hate sponsorship where the sponsor gets to veto payments on other cards, or offers special arrangements solely for those using their card.
I got rid of all my Visa cards after Visa overstepped the mark with some sponsorship deals in the UK where tickets for the 2012 Olympics were only available if you bought them using a Visa card. That was so wrong on so many levels and I want nothing to do with such a company.
Would someone please explain WHERE Coachella is? I’ve never heard of it before.