I haven’t been to a rock concert in — you know what? I’m not dating myself here. Suffice it to say, it has been a long, long time.
But if I were ready to rock out to, say, Florence and the Machine (that’s a band, for all of you readers my age and older), I’d have American Express’s Serve to thank.
Back in November, American Express inked a deal with Ticketmaster to get its Serve peer-to-peer payments platform some heavy rotation through the ticketing service. Well, that deal has finally been realized, and Bank Innovation took a look at how Amex is playing Serve through Ticketmaster.
Officially, the Serve-Ticketmaster deal kicked off on Nov. 7. At its most basic, Serve lets one friend pay back another friend for concert tickets.
What’s interesting about the Ticketmaster deal is just how integrated Serve is to the ticketing service. First, Serve is included in the ticket sale page (at right):
But even after you go to Serve to sign up for the service …
… Ticketmaster branding remains a part of the transaction process (at right) …
By looking at Serve, you can see how social payments can become a part of the transaction process, both from the standpoint of the payments provider’s and the payee. How successful will this partnership be is anyone’s guess. However, Ticketmaster generates more than 26 million monthly unique visitors to its site, according to parent company Live Nation Entertainment — that should spark at least a Serve payment or two for Florence and the Machine tickets, I would think.