We explain how the new card-system at Sziget festivals work – from merchants point of view

In order to reduce queuing time at the sales pitches of this year's Sziget festivals and thus increase traffic, no cash will be accepted at the festival areas. Instead of paying in cash, the card-system introduced last year will be used again.

Here is a short summary of the card system:

The card is not an ATM-card, but a Sziget-card you add credit to in advance. In order to pay, the only thing you need to do is touch the paying terminal with the card, you do not need to place it in the terminal or add your signature. This way paying takes significantly less time than it would if paying in cash.

Recharging cards

Visitors receive a card when entering the festival area, and they get to add credit to these cards by ATM-card or in cash at various top up-points set up by Sziget. You may add any amount of money to your credit, and also you may recharge your card any time – of course, you can also redeem the sum you have not spent. Sziget will provide visitors with several top up-points, so that you can access them any time you need to recharge your card. Based on a decision made later, now visitors get to purchase Sziget-cards with a fixed amount of credit at various sales points.

Cardreader – paying POS terminals

In order to pay by Sziget-card, each point of sale is provided with a cardreader POS terminal, commensurate with the length of the counter. The terminal consists of two parts – on the visitor's side, there is a firmly fixed cardreader device, on the salesperson's side there is a POS terminal. Each point of sale receives information and education about the usage of the terminal, moreover constant support is offered throughout the festivals.
The POS terminal operates independently of the cash register, and thw two are not connected in any ways.

Paying by Sziget-cards

Paying by these cards happens in the following way: before making an order, the visitor touches the cardreader device with their card, so that the salesperson can see on the POS terminal* the amount of credit the person has on the card, then the salesperson types in the sum and the tip, and pushes the green button which means that the purchase by the Metapay-card is approved. After closing the order, the final sum appears on the screen of cardreader (this way it is needless to explain it in words).Then, the visitor is informed about their balance on the screen of the cardreader. There is an option to cancel the latest transaction, if necessary.

*in case the barman opts for the „Balance Query” menupoint

Checking the traffic

Leader of the point of sale can check the traffic of the POS-terminals any time, so that they can follow the traffic of the venue from minute to minute, and – if there are more POS terminals – they can also compare the traffic of various POS terminals. It is possible to send up-to-date traffic-information in email or in text message to persons in charge, moreover data is also printable at POS terminals.

Settlement

Settlement takes place at a point of settlement set up for this purpose, based on transaction reports stored on the central server. The central server gathers all pay-transactions of the point of sale's POS terminal. Throughout the final settlement process, the transaction commission – which is 2 percent – will be deducted. The leader of the point of sale (or a person on their behalf) is entitled to pick up the cash or ask for a bank transfer, based on the transaction report.
The IT service operating the system for Sziget Ltd. will not store or use any settlement records, and will destroy all data associated with the event after closing the settlement process.