Post-Covid, thousands of arenas, parks, and stadiums across the country have made an effort to go cashless. Eliminating physical tender has plenty of advantages, largely improving safety, speed, and convenience across the board. Beginning in 2023, the University of Alabama was looking to become the next program to eliminate handling cash across all of its sporting venues on campus, while offering fans who did bring cash an a quick and easy solution.
Fancards was founded in 2015 as a prepaid financial tech company specializing in collegiately licensed gift and reloadable cards for fans. The University of Alabama was Fancards’ first university partner, so it made perfect sense when the Crimson Tide reached out to Fancards to help with their cashless venue transition.
Cashless Case Study
Introduction:
Introduction:
Post-Covid, thousands of arenas, parks, and stadiums across the country have made an effort to go cashless. Eliminating physical tender has plenty of advantages, largely improving safety, speed, and convenience across the board. Beginning in 2023, the University of Alabama was looking to become the next program to eliminate handling cash across all of its sporting venues on campus, while offering fans who did bring cash an a quick and easy solution.
Fancards was founded in 2015 as a prepaid financial tech company specializing in collegiately licensed gift and reloadable cards for fans. The University of Alabama was Fancards’ first university partner, so it made perfect sense when the Crimson Tide reached out to Fancards to help with their cashless venue transition.
Challenge:
As of 2021, around 18% of Alabamians were either unbanked or underbanked, according to the FDIC. This meant that many fans either didn’t use debit or credit cards regularly, or didn’t have consistent access to a bank card that they used every day.
As such, the University of Alabama knew many fans would show up with cash as their primary payment method, and in some cases, their only payment method. With venues going cashless, Alabama wanted those fans to be able to exchange their cash for a card they could use anywhere in and around the stadium.
Solution:
Fancards procured thousands of its Alabama Mastercard Gift Cards in various denominations to help fans who wanted to exchange their cash. Fancards partnered with the University of Alabama’s concessions partner, Levy Restaurants, to set up areas around stadiums where fans could quickly exchange their cash for an Alabama Mastercard Gift Card. Once fans received their gift card, they could use it anywhere in the stadium, and take it home with them and continue spending any remaining funds. Fancards also provided reporting on how much cash was exchanged and at what denominations.
Results and Impact:
By going cashless, the University of Alabama experienced a smoother speed of service at all its POS areas. It also eliminated large amounts of cash that were previously distributed to each of its many concession stands across the stadium.
Fans who brought cash were able to exchange it for a card, thus still being able to spend money in and around each venue.
Fans walked away with an Alabama-branded card rather than a generic debit card, another unique touchpoint for the university.
