Johannesburg September 19, 2012 -- Standard Bank brings payment innovation to everything from music festivals, transport, and even to South Africa's recent Cap Classique and Champagne Festival sponsored by MasterCard

From cashless bus ticketing systems to payments for bubbly - it's all in a days work for Standard Banks innovations hub, Beyond Payments.

The team that developed the country's first dual purpose EMV payment card (transit products for bus travel and stored value for retail purchases) was commissioned by MasterCard to develop a Tap N Go solution for festivalgoers at the recent Bubbly Festival in Gauteng.

Over 2000 cards were issued to festivalgoers during the two-day event, who could savour the bubbly delights from over 36 different Cap Classique and champagne producers, both local and those in France.

Visitors paid R250 for entrance to the festival and this entitled them to 10 tastings at the producers' booths. Tapping the Bubbly card against a card reader paid for the tastings, and the voucher value was deducted from the card.

"Our brief from Mastercard was to develop a cashless payment mechanism that would make paying for the tastings quick and easy, as well as help improve cash management on the premises," said Mike Hughes, business development manager for Beyond Payments.

"We had just four weeks to complete the project from card design and production, to implementation of both the card readers and the cards themselves," said Matthew Goosen, project manager for Beyond Payments.

Beyond Payments made headlines recently when the eThekwini Municipality announced the rollout of its Muvo card - a cashless ticketing solution for its buses. The card is unique in that it is both an anonymous debit MasterCard and a ticketing solution that meets the requirements of the National Department of Transport's (NDoT).

This is believed to be the first time that transit tickets are hosted inside a banking application on an EMV contactless card, and the first time that a card of this nature has been rolled out in South Africa in full compliance with NDoT's regulations.

This solution differs from normal payment cards used to purchase tickets for each trip in that tickets of different types, such as scholar or pensioner tickets, or tickets for different routes and journeys, can be stored on the card as well.

NDoT compliance also allows for the solution, developed by Beyond Payments and Almex, to be adopted by any municipality.

"The integration of a fare management system on the card is key and takes us as a bank into a new space in value added services," said Hughes.

"What was wonderful with this project is that we could take the same technology that we used in that groundbreaking municipal application and apply it to the needs of a bubbly quenching public," Hughes added.

These cashless solutions are finding growing acceptance in a number of applications including university campuses, canteens, student bookstores, concerts and rock festivals as well as transport.

Beyond Payments will also be providing a similar solution for the Cap Classique and Champagne Festival to be hosted in Franschhoek later this year.