Rock in Rio attendees tend to be modern people who value their individuality and their own unique style. That’s why we had the idea to use the best possible representation of someone’s personal style: tattoos. To make purchases at Rock in Rio, attendees didn’t even have to take out their wallets – they could just show their tattoos at check-out. A smartphone app would recognize the image as if it were a password and process the payment immediately.

We created the Visa Tattoo app, which was only available for employees inside Rock in Rio. It worked like this: to register a user, the app required that a photo be taken of one of his or her tattoos. That image would be stored in a database and registered along with the tattoo owner’s personal information. After registering, the buyer could make a purchase just by showing their tattoo at check-out. Here, image recognition technology similar to QR code readers came into play. With the app open, promoters could use their cell phone cameras to read the consumer’s tattoo, and the image would be compared against the database. If the tattoo was recognized, the payment would be confirmed right away and the client could go off with their purchase.

Just like the music at the festival, the initiative made a lot of noise. More than 6 million people were impacted, in addition to 1.7 million interactions on social media. Over 350 people registered on the platform to pay with their tattoos, and we had excellent brand recall among groups of people who were exposed to our messaging.