Data insights thanks to omnichannel in the stadium

FC St.Gallen 1879 is one of the most traditional football clubs and institutions in professional sports in Switzerland and Europe. The club's home arena - the multifunctional kybunpark stadium - is one of the most modern and largest sports facilities in the country and is an expression of the club's aspiration to strive for the best in all areas. A modern overall solution was also sought in the area of payments and insights into payment flows.

In the stadium and around a football club, a wide variety of payment channels, flows and technologies come together: from ticketing, to catering facilities, fan stores or even projects such as capital increases, for which share certificates could be purchased online or on site.

FC St.Gallen 1879 has recognized that the right payment provider not only opens up new sources of revenue, additional payment channels or modern terminal infrastructure, but that the aggregation of this data from different channels by an omnichannel provider like wallee can also offer completely new insights. This forms the starting point for a variety of future-oriented digital services, e.g. in the areas of loyalty or customer relationship management.

With the claim of wanting to be among the best - also in the area of modern payment infrastructure, digital services and insights - FC St.Gallen 1879 has chosen wallee as its omnichannel partner.

wallee terminals & cloud technology

The tools of the trade for payments in the stadium. A modern terminal fleet with Android-based card readers from wallee is used. Our advanced cloud terminal technology ensures that maintenance, configuration or changes/extensions to the fleet can be carried out conveniently and, above all, autonomously by the customer. Via the wallee portal, all settings can be played directly onto the desired device via remote maintenance. If damaged devices need to be replaced or additional terminals are required for an event, they can be rented from wallee and added to the overall infrastructure with a single click.

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Apps on the terminal

wallee terminals are also app-enabled. This means that a wide range of special additional functions are available from our partners - for example, checkout software that runs directly on the terminal and thus integrates the management of products and payment processing. Both in the backend, as both can be managed via the cloud, and in contact with the customer, as service staff have all functions mobile at the guest. Walking distances are eliminated, waiting times and transaction times are reduced, and customer orientation increases.

Omnichannel in the football stadium

What does that actually mean - omnichannel? Historically, systems for payment processing on different channels - e.g., at stadium box offices, employees with vending machines, in online ticketing or in the online store for fan articles - were detached from each other and not networked. In this respect, set-up, connections, configurations, payment methods & providers, training, etc. have to be carried out several times separately for each channel. An enormous expenditure of time and money. However, this is still the case in many companies today.

wallee works differently. The basis is provided by a modern cloud infrastructure including cloud terminals, cloud API for integration, preconfigured plugins for webshop systems and an intelligent web portal from which everything can be operated, configured and controlled centrally by the customer himself. That is wallee Omnichannel. For a customer like FC St.Gallen 1879, this means: setup and integration only have to be done once, configurations can be managed remotely by the customer, contract management is significantly simplified and the number of individual contracts (e.g. with acquirers) can be reduced, payment flows are displayed in a standardized manner and insights are thus possible across all channels.

In a concrete case, this means, for example, the product manager for the catering trade maintains a new assortment or current prices in the cloud POS software and it is immediately updated and ready for use on the terminal. An additional payment method, for example TWINT, is set up and can be used directly on the terminals and all online check-outs. Said employee with a vendor's tray can use the mobile terminal to access the product directory and offer various payment methods just as he would for VIP catering in a restaurant. And the CFO can view all data in real time in the portal or via the company's own integrations and identify potential.

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wallee Payment Analytics

wallee Omnichannel provides the perfect foundation for wallee Payment Analytics: a comprehensive, digital picture of sales activity in real time. This fits perfectly with the digital DNA of FC St.Gallen 1879. Our new product is already available to FCSG today in the beta phase. The payment analytics platform generates metadata on sales events from the payment data of the various channels and processes it in reports. This allows interesting correlations to be uncovered: How does the weather affect occupancy times, how are sales points frequented differently depending on their location in the stadium, what influence does the match day and kick-off time have on sales in product range XY, and much more.

This information provides a comprehensive picture to better plan resources, uncover potential, make targeted offers in catering or with sponsors, and ultimately serve the fan in a more customer-oriented way. FC St.Gallen 1879 will also use this data to optimize its digital customer service.

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