Eventbrite's New iPad Credit Card Reader Allows Event Organizers To Collect Ticket Payments At The Door
Online ticketing platform Eventbrite is making a big push towards reaching $1 billion in gross ticket sales in 2012; after doubling both the number of events on platform in 2011 …
Context & Ripple Effects
Eventbrite doubled the number of events on its platform during 2011 and has set a target of $1 billion in gross ticket sales for 2012, so the company is looking for volume levers beyond web-based checkout. The iPad card reader is that lever: it converts walk-up attendees — historically cash-box territory — into transactions that run through Eventbrite's existing fee pipeline.
The story traveled unusually widely for a product launch, picked up same-day by eight outlets including Fast Company, The Verge, CNET, and WSJ's Digits blog, which reflects how crowded the conversation around smartphone-and-tablet payments had become by March 2012.
First-order effects
- Eventbrite organizers can now collect paid tickets at the door on an iPad, meaning late-deciding attendees no longer need cash or a separate box-office setup — every walk-up sale flows through Eventbrite's processing and fees.
Second-order effects
- The move puts Eventbrite head-to-head with Square and other mobile card-reader players for the small-event merchant, turning per-transaction fees rather than listing features into the pricing battleground.
- Software-only ticketing rivals face pressure to ship their own hardware bundles, because a platform that misses the door sale loses revenue on exactly the inventory hardest to sell online.
Third-order effects
- If ticketing platforms own both demand generation and payment settlement for live events, they consolidate the full transaction stack — discovery, checkout, and hardware — and shift leverage away from standalone payment processors toward whoever controls the event's money flow.
The trend: Live-event ticketing platforms are expanding from online checkout into physical point-of-sale payments, becoming end-to-end transaction infrastructure for events rather than software listings alone.