Hyde Park Winter Wonderland 2025 – Case Study

1. Overview

Hyde Park Winter Wonderland is one of Europe’s largest seasonal attractions, bringing together rides, games, food, drink, and entertainment within a high-intensity, multi-vendor environment.

Tapaygo led the end-to-end delivery of the payments and operational ecosystem, managing vendor onboarding, device infrastructure, and onsite execution at scale.

Glownet supported Tapaygo as their SaaS platform partner, providing the underlying payments, wallet, and marketplace technology that enabled this delivery.

As Official Payment Sponsor of Hyde Park Winter Wonderland, Viva.com provided the enterprise-grade acquiring infrastructure supporting high-throughput card payment acceptance across the venue.

This deployment demonstrates how Tapaygo, Glownet, and Viva.com combined complementary capabilities to deliver a complex, high-volume event ecosystem while allowing the operator to retain full commercial and operational control.

2. The Challenge

Winter Wonderland presents a unique convergence of challenges:

• Extreme, compressed peak trading windows
• Highly dynamic customer flows
• 130+ independent vendors with varying commercial models
• Complex settlement requirements
• Zero tolerance for payment friction or downtime

To succeed, the organiser required a delivery partner capable of orchestrating operations at scale, supported by technology that could unify transactions, enforce commercial logic, and provide real-time visibility.

3. Supporting Tapaygo’s Delivery Model

Glownet enabled Tapaygo to deliver a fully integrated ecosystem through a unified payments, wallet, and marketplace platform.

Unified Payments & Marketplace Platform

Through Glownet’s platform, Tapaygo was able to connect:

• Their POS and device estate
• Ticketing integrations (e.g. See Tickets)
• QR and RFID wallet infrastructure
• Vendor marketplace configuration
• Settlement and reporting systems

Card payment acquiring and transaction routing were delivered through Viva.com's enterprise payment infrastructure, ensuring reliable, high-throughput card acceptance across the venue.

This created a single source of truth across all transactions, fully operated and managed by Tapaygo, through Glownet’s unified platform infrastructure.

Wallets, eTags, and Package Fulfilment

A key component of the deployment was the use of Glownet’s wallet and eTag infrastructure, configured and operated by Tapaygo:

• Pre-purchased packages converted into digital wallets
• Bundled entitlements (rides, games, credits) centrally managed
• eTags enabling granular control at transaction level

Benefits:

• Seamless redemption across the venue
• Consistent validation across all vendor types
• Full reconciliation between entitlement and spend

This illustrates how Glownet provides the underlying commerce and marketplace infrastructure, while partners like Tapaygo lead delivery and operational execution.

Marketplace & Settlement

Glownet’s marketplace engine enabled Tapaygo to operate a fully managed commercial environment:

• Vendor-specific pricing and catalogues
• Automated enforcement of revenue share agreements
• Transaction-level settlement and reporting

By combining Glownet’s infrastructure with Tapaygo’s operational control, the event achieved both flexibility and financial accuracy at scale.

4. Enabling Scale Across 130+ Vendors

Working through Tapaygo’s delivery model, supported by Glownet:

• 130+ vendors were onboarded into a unified system
• Commercial rules were centrally managed
• Reporting was shared across organisers and vendors

Impact:

• Elimination of fragmented systems
• Removal of manual reconciliation
• Reduced disputes through transparent data

Partners are empowered to operate complex marketplaces efficiently.

5. Real-Time Insight & Performance

Because all transactions flowed through the platform:

Key Observations:

• Demand concentrated in short peak windows
• High-frequency repeat transactions
• Early engagement strongly linked to total spend
• Throughput—not average spend—drove revenue

Glownet provided the data infrastructure, enabling Tapaygo to monitor, adapt, and optimise operations in real time.

6. Operational Control & Reliability

Through this partnership model:

• Tapaygo maintained full operational control, managing device infrastructure, vendor operations, and onsite performance throughout the deployment.
• Glownet ensured platform stability and scalability, providing the payments, wallet, marketplace, and reporting infrastructure underpinning the ecosystem.
• Viva.com, as Official Payment Sponsor, provided reliable, high-throughput card payment acceptance throughout peak trading periods.
• All transactions remained fully auditable and traceable across the ecosystem.

Outcome:

A high-volume, high-pressure environment was delivered without compromising performance, visibility, or control.

7. What This Partnership Model Enables

For organisers, a partnership model combining Tapaygo's operational delivery, Glownet's marketplace platform, and Viva.com's enterprise payment infrastructure enables:

• Confident delivery during peak demand
• Transparent, contract-aligned settlement
• Faster transactions and reduced friction
• Deep, real-time customer insight
• A scalable and repeatable operating model

8. Glownet’s Role

Glownet’s focus is to enable and support partners like Tapaygo, providing the technology foundation that allows them to deliver at scale:

• Payments platform and wallet infrastructure
• Marketplace and settlement engine
• Integration layer across ticketing, POS, and vendors
• Real-time data and reporting tools

Rather than replacing the operator, Glownet is designed to amplify the capabilities of experienced delivery partners.

9. Applicability

This model is ideally suited to partners delivering:

• Large-scale festivals
• Seasonal attractions
• Multi-vendor destinations
• Fan zones and complex event environments

10. Delivery Model

• Tapaygo - Lead delivery partner responsible for operations, devices, vendor enablement, and ecosystem management.
• Glownet - SaaS platform partner enabling POS, payments, wallets, marketplace, and settlement infrastructure.
• Viva.com - Official Payment Sponsor providing enterprise acquiring and high-throughput card payment infrastructure.

To learn more about how Glownet can support complex, high-volume events and multi-vendor destinations, explore our Marketplace solution or get in touch with our team to discuss your requirements.