Word to the wise… 2000trees is 100% cashless, there will be no cash machines this year, so to make sure you have the best time ever, please read this news post in full & register for a cashless account before you get to the festival. 

WHAT’S CASHLESS?

We have banished cash from 2000trees & introduced the PlayPass Cashless system. Instead of paying for drinks, food or merch with cash, you now just need to load your money onto your RFID wristbands & zap these to pay for stuff.

It’s faster, cheaper & easier than getting cash onsite & the best thing is, you can’t lose the money in your pockets because now it’s attached to your wristband.

It doesn’t need wifi to allow payments so being in a festival field won’t be a problem.  As long as you register your account, preload some money onto your wristband & select Auto Top Up you won’t have to queue to access your cash on arrival. 

You can go straight to the bar or your favourite food stall and get on with the serious business of partying!

WHAT DO I NEED TO DO NOW?
If you’ve already got your ticket, you can register with PlayPass from May 10th.  Then simply link your ticket barcode number to your PlayPass account & load it up with some cash.

WHY CASHLESS?

To allay any concerns you may (or may not) have please read on for a few responses to some questions raised in the past…

Why are you doing this?
1) Mainly because it’s faster, safer & easier for everyone concerned. That includes you, our esteemed guests, bars, food traders & our stall holders. It worked brilliantly in 2018 and we were overwhelmed with the positive responses.

Cash may seem easy to the person spending it, but it’s a right royal pain in the proverbials for us, our bars & our traders.  Firstly you have to get floats from the bank (who charge you through the nose).  All those coins required for change literally weigh a ton & then there’s the risk of the money going missing/ stolen.  All of these headaches are removed with cashless. But it’s also quicker, safer & easier for you guys.

What’s wrong with cash?
2) Cashless is simply safer than carrying cash for everyone on site.  If you lose your cash on the high street, it’s gone for good.  If you lose your wristband at 2000trees, simply tell one of our Top Up station staff ASAP & they’ll immediately cancel your old wristband and give you a new one with the balance you had remaining on your lost wristband.  Surely that’s got to be better than being stranded with zero cash?

Is it cashless everywhere?
3) The whole site will be cashless, (except if you really want to Top Up your wristband with cash at a Top Up station).  There will be Top Up stations dotted around the site. There will not be cash machines this year.

Silent disco deposits cashless?
4) Yep! Just like the old days, pay a £10 deposit with your wristband, then get the money back to your wristband when you return the headsets.  Any money left over at the end of the festival can be claimed back as a refund straight to your bank account, more on this later on.

Will there still be lockers & phone charging?
5) Yes.

Rumours of cashless not working at other events.
6) AKA The Download 2015 question. Ours is a completely different system to the one used at Download in 2015 & you may have noticed 2000trees is a little bit smaller.  Also that was 4 years ago and technology in general has developed a lot since then, particularly regarding cashless systems.

Cashless festivals are now very much the norm in the world, and we are convinced that using this widespread technology will result in a better festival experience for everyone.

The Playpass system does not have any single point of failure. It will sync across the site with all the traders/ bars & what’s more wifi is not required to spend money.  If you need to top up your wristband over the weekend, there will be Top Up stations, all of which have their own dedicated (private) wifi network. We’re confident that this dedicated cashless wifi network will work uninterrupted all weekend because it has already proven to be reliable at 2000trees last year. Yes, the public wifi sometimes struggles with the weight of traffic, but this is why we also have a private network for cashless.

The public wifi can be used to top up with your phone in a wifi area if you so wish.

However if you select Auto Top Up now, you won’t have to worry about finding a Top Up station or wifi, it will automatically top up when your wristband gets low.  It simply tops up, by the amount you pre-selected on registration, the next time you try to pay for something.

Topping up with cash or cards on site?
8) Yes you can top up with cash or cards at a Top Up station. But why would you want to queue to do that, when you can do it in advance? Preload your account now, select Auto Top Up then you don’t have to worry about topping up once you’re on site.

What about refunds?
9) No problem! You can get all your unspent money refunded, by clicking on the playpass link which we’ll send out after the festival.  Yes there’s a £1 charge to do this.  This is because humans need to process these refunds & unfortnately humans cost money.  You will be able to request a refund from the Tuesday after 2000trees until 31st July 2019.  To get the unspent money back it’s really important that you keep your wristband, or take a note of the number printed on the back of it – you need to enter this in to the web portal so your wristband (and therefore the money left on it) can be identified.  PLEASE DO NOT THROW AWAY YOUR WRISTBAND BEFORE YOU CLAIM YOUR MONEY BACK OR MAKING A NOTE OF THE WRISTBAND NUMBER, OTHERWISE YOU MAY NOT BE ABLE TO GET YOUR MONEY BACK.

Free Money?
10) Yep, you got it! It really helps to take the strain off the top-up stations, and therefore keep queues to a minimum, if as many people as possible add money to their wristbands before arriving at the festival.  It makes everyone’s experience better, so we want to give you a nudge in the right direction and give you a few beers on us for helping out.  Therefore , everyone who tops up £100 or more pre-event will get 10% of the amount they add to their account as free additional spending money*, on us, or a merch bundle worth £35 if you top up £250.

In all seriousness, we massively appreciate how much you love 2000trees & the last thing we want to do is upset even a single one of you.  That said, we’re super confident that this will revolutionise festivals of the future & we’re super duper confident that it will be a massive success at 2000trees, otherwise we wouldn’t have signed up for it.

Our final bit of advice is…

1) Register now (link below)
2) Put some money on your account before the festival &
3) Select Auto Top Up so you won’t need to worry about topping up or running out of cash.

This way you won’t have to queue at a Top Up station & you can just keep the party in full swing all weekend long.

Register with PlayPass today. 

Any other questions please feel free to hit reply to this email & we’ll try and help you out.

See here for more in depth FAQs