Seamless and secure payments at the heart of the Orange Vélodrome stadium thanks to 5G+

Published on: 19/09/2025

5mn reading time

On concert night, the Orange Vélodrome stadium is buzzing. The lights come on, the first notes ring out, and 75,000 spectators raise their phones to film, share, and comment. But behind the merchandise stands, another scene is unfolding: queues are getting longer, the audience is getting impatient, and sometimes a fateful message appears on the payment terminal screens: “network connection problem.”

This scenario, which occurs regularly at large gatherings, from football matches to concerts, reflects a very real problem: mobile network saturation. This problem is costly for organizers and, above all, can detract from the spectators’ experience. It is precisely this observation that led Orange, in partnership with Mars 360, to launch an experiment with the Orange Vélodrome’s 5G Lab: using 5G+ to secure and streamline payments, even when the network is saturated.

Orange Vélodrome and Mars 360 have experimented 5G+

Sector of activity

Events, Retail

Business needs

Ensure fast and reliable payments during large, high-traffic events, even when the network is saturated.

Solutions

Use 5G+ with dedicated bandwidth via an Airbox equipped with a 5G+ SIM card to prioritize payment terminal traffic.

Benefits of 5G+

It offers priority and stable connectivity, ensuring uninterrupted transactions and improving the customer experience and sales staff productivity.

The challenge: payments failing during peak periods

“Initially, the discussion around experimentation stemmed from network saturation and expected attendance, with more than 70,000 people expected at summer concerts,” explains Benjamin Colliaux, major events project manager at Mars 360, the company that manages the Orange Vélodrome. “A lot of people were coming, and above all, a lot of people were going to be connected.”

Guillaume Chabas, Director of Innovation and B2B Partnerships France at Orange Business, and Head of the Orange Vélodrome 5G Lab, adds: “We’ve all experienced that moment at a concert, festival, or major sporting event, when you go to buy a T-shirt and the payment terminal spins around before displaying that the transaction has failed. The terminals call the banks to check that the funds are available, but because the networks are under strain, the transaction fails.

The result: failed transactions, frustrated spectators, and lost sales.

The solution: dedicated bandwidth thanks to 5G+

The answer to this problem is quite simple: dedicated bandwidth thanks to 5G+.

We turned to Orange and their 5G+ technology, which allows certain devices to be prioritized on the network,” explains Benjamin Prato, CTO of Olympique de Marseille

In practical terms, this involves an Airbox developed in partnership with Nokia—the Flybox 2 5G—equipped with a 5G+ SIM card. Existing payment terminals connect to this Airbox via Wi-Fi, benefiting from prioritized bandwidth thanks to network slicing. Once the terminals are connected, their traffic becomes a priority on the network and transactions go through smoothly:

It’s like there’s a traffic jam, and we have a priority lane,” illustrates Benjamin Prato.

Once the solution is in place, 100% of users benefit from consistent quality and dedicated bandwidth,” explains Guillaume Chabas.

The strength of the system lies in its simplicity: the teams at the Orange Vélodrome 5G Lab install the boxes, provide a Wi-Fi code, and anyone can then use it without any difficulty.

We have implemented a very simple solution that does not require any training for sales staff. You plug in the box, enter the Wi-Fi code into the payment terminal, just like you would at home, and that’s it,” confirms Benjamin Colliaux.

In other words, teams in the field can focus on sales without worrying about connectivity.

This approach also avoids the need to replace the entire fleet of terminals, which is both economical and environmentally friendly.

“The end customer does not have to make a heavy investment, as there is no need to replace all the payment terminals,” explains Guillaume Chabas. He adds: “Our mission at the Orange Vélodrome 5G Lab is to make a technically complex issue simple for the average user, so that our customers can focus on their business rather than on IT.”

Tangible results

Since the trial began in June, the system has been used at several concerts at the Orange Vélodrome stadium. In each case, payments were smooth and uninterrupted, even during peak connection times.

Spectators don’t even realize that a technical solution is in place. For them, everything works, and that’s what matters,” explains Benjamin Colliaux

For Guillaume Chabas, this is exactly the sign that the gamble has paid off: “It means that we have succeeded in our mission of simple deployment with high business added value.

Feedback from teams in the field is unanimous: organizers, vendors, and spectators all benefit from greater peace of mind.

On the one hand, it provides a better customer experience, with less waiting time at the stand, and on the other hand, vendors are not subject to network issues that disrupt their work,” explains Guillaume Chabas.

And what’s next? 5G+ technology could well be applied to other uses in the stadium:

Given that the test has been conclusive and the technology works very well, we are considering deploying it on a larger scale at club matches, for example for access control,” explains Benjamin Prato.

Potential beyond sports and entertainment

As major events become more frequent and customer experience becomes a real differentiator, the experiment conducted by the Orange Vélodrome 5G Lab team demonstrates much broader potential. Festivals, train stations, ports, airports: these are all high-density locations where certain critical functions, such as access control, ticketing, and critical transactions, must remain operational under all circumstances, even when the network is saturated.

With 5G+, we can guarantee network performance where it is most critical. This solution can be deployed on a large scale in sports, entertainment, and any other high-traffic environments,” emphasizes Guillaume Chabas.

Ultimately, the real success of this experiment may lie in this: a technology that is invisible to the user but essential in allowing professionals to focus on their core business without fear of potential connectivity failures.