What makes a resold ticket a Secure Swap?
Diving into our complete solution to the secondary ticketing issues of unsafe tickets and unfair prices
How do I know that the tickets I bought are real and safe to use?
It’s question that continually haunts every purchaser of secondhand tickets, whether it be from a touting website like Viagogo, a stranger hanging outside of the venue or “Molly from Leeds” who works at Lidl and has 314 friends on Facebook.
At TicketSwap, we strive to be the safest way to buy & sell spare tickets. Of course, a big part of what we provide is fairness (all prices at capped at a maximum of 20% above the original price), transparency (assurance that you are buying from a real fan and no hidden fees) and convenience (purchase or sell a ticket with a few taps on your phone while standing in the queue); all things that are at short supply in the secondary ticketing industry. However, none of those three USPs actually matter, if the ticket you bought doesn’t allow you to enter the event and leaves you outside in entrance while the rest of your friends are inside having a blast.
In order to make the transactions between fans on our platform as safe as possible, reduce the capacity for human error and prevent nefarious fraud attempts, we’ve continually had to configure our platform to be human-proof and think one step ahead of would-be scammers. Accordingly we’ve built our platform in such a way that 99.5% of transactions are safe, and receive positive feedback from buyers. However, we’re not prepared to rest on our laurels and the quest for safe secondhand tickets has pushed us to look beyond our platform and to cooperate with industry organisations with similar aspirations and values, in order to deliver the safest and best possible user experience.
These partner organisations — venues, promoters and ticket companies — understand that there’s a need for people to resell tickets they can no longer use, and the only way to ensure that this resale activity is not disruptive or dangerous, is to proactively deliver a solution. A solution that is extremely simple and 100% safe. Our Secure Swap system delivers this by seamlessly verifying each ticket resold on TS for a given event, and replacing it with a brand new, unique ticket. It’s also makes “Personalisation” or name changes easy by giving event organisers the option to require new buyers to enter their full name before downloading the ticket. So they can be verified by ID at the event entrance.
For nearly 3 years, through cooperations with partners, the Secure Swap system has been deployed at thousands of events across 10 countries. To give you a better understanding of the impact of Secure Swap, we’ll share three brief case studies of how it works in practice. Broadly, our Secure Swap partnerships fall into one of the following three categories:
1. Venue: Ancienne Belgique + TicketMatic
What? Belgium’s premier mid-sized venue (2000 capacity main hall)
Why? As Brussels’ top venue, naturally it attracts the best artists, frequently sells out and often has problems with ticket touts and fraud.
How? Through an integration with AB’s ticket provider Ticketmatic, we were able to set up Secure Swap for all events at this iconic venue. When demand for an event is high, fans can avoid ticket touts and head to TicketSwap to find face value tickets with peace of mind.
2. Festival: SZIGET
What? One of the largest music festivals in Europe, with 450,000 visitors flocking to Budapest (90,000 daily capacity)
Why? Over 25 years, Sziget has grown to be perhaps the most international festival on the planet. Handling resale across all these different languages and currencies is a mammoth task, as well as proactively preventing fraud and unfair prices.
How? For the 2017 edition, TicketSwap integrated directly with Sziget’s in-house ticketing system, meaning all 65 ticket types available for the festival can be safely resold. Visitors arriving throughout the week-long festival experience a painless entrance process, whether they bought their tickets on the primary sale, or secondary market through TicketSwap.
3. Ticket Company: Paylogic
What? One of the largest ticketing companies in the global festival market. Paylogic’s clients range from massive ID&T festivals like Mysteryland to independent promoters like Cercle in France.
Why? TicketSwap’s emergence as the fans’ choice for easy and safe resale for festivals coincided with Paylogic’s establishment as one of the most powerful festival ticketing platforms in the world. With shared values of making event ticketing as simple and transparent as possible, our partnership was formed to deliver a complete primary/secondary ticketing solution at scale: Secure Swap.
How? Since 2016, we’ve been integrated with Paylogic, providing a resale service to their clients across Europe. Promoters and festival organisers can choose to turn on the Secure Swap system and ensure that their fans have access to 100% safe resale tickets on their event.
In each case, Secure Swap delivers a positive outcomes by simplifying the headache of ticket resale for promoters or venues, and ensuring safe secondhand tickets for fans. It also provides independent ticket companies who are serious about combating touting, with the means to provide clients with ticket resale services that are based on consumer need, instead of profiteering. Secure Swap augments the everyday service we provide at TicketSwap, improving the experience of fans who simply want to buy resold tickets with peace of mind — whether that be at their local venue or at a massive international festival.
To learn more about Secure Swap, visit our dedicated page here. If you are interested in setting up Secure Swap for your next event, get in touch here.
