One route for every payment

Highlights

The challenge: payments were taking time away from the product

Selling tickets at scale means collecting money every way a visitor wants to pay. Over time, Ticketcounter’s payment setup had grown across several relationships. Local payment methods such as iDEAL and Bancontact ran through one provider, Mastercard and Visa payments came through another, and American Express and PayPal ran alongside as direct relationships. 

At the start of every month, transactions from four external payment systems had to be matched against bookings, with the finance team tracing whatever did not line up. Scattered data and reconciliation processes meant one to two days every month was spent on closing the books, not on running the core business.

Fraudulent transactions used to form another stream of distraction. Ticketcounter takes a rather conservative approach to ticket sales, ensuring each and every card payment is strongly authenticated before it is authorized. Through Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), issuing banks take the liability of a potential chargeback, which is seen by Ticketcounter as a way to protect card payments and turnover. Despite this, Ticketcounter received around 1,500 indefensible chargebacks each year, without visibility into dispute reasons.

This naturally resulted in frustration with both Ticketcounter and partners. Not to speak about time and money lost.

Consolidating payment flows

The goals were clear: to win back time and money. To take back control. Getting back to innovating. That meant finding a partner to consolidate checkouts, payment methods, reporting, reconciliation, and fraud prevention, for Ticketcounter as a platform, and equally as well for its merchants. 

In Rootline, Ticketcounter found that partner. Local payment methods, credit and debit cards, including American Express now all run through Rootline. PayPal is connected through the same API and settlement flows as well, fully unifying reports and payouts to merchants.

For Ticketcounter, monthly reconciliation runs against one dataset rather than several provider reports. The finance team has one place to pull its figures from, reducing both internal work and the time its accountant spends on reconciliation.

Rootline also gives Ticketcounter a setup built for the next stage of its growth, with merchants onboarded individually and client funds safeguarded. As more of Ticketcounter’s clients are onboarded, Ticketcounter and Rootline are looking to introduce even more improvements for customers, such as in-person payment options, and new payment methods.

Fighting fraud before the chargeback

Most platforms discover card fraud after it has happened, when the acquirer reports a chargeback. Rootline's fraud tool, Signals, works earlier in the process. It tracks cards and other payment credentials that recur across fraud attempts, flags repeat patterns using frequency rules on suspicious card attempts, and blocks known bad actors through shared trust and block lists.

Visibility made as much of a difference as prevention. Under the previous setup, most chargebacks came back with no reason code attached, leaving Ticketcounter unable to tell what had happened or why a case couldn't be fought. Rootline now surfaces the dispute reason and liability shift status on every chargeback, so Ticketcounter can see not just that a payment was disputed, but why, and whether it was ever defensible as well.

The benefit extends beyond card payments. Where Ticketcounter’s direct PayPal integration used to limit them in preventing fraud in the past, the new setup allows for extensive fraud prevention checks through Signals, linking together fraudulent behavior even across payment methods.

The difference shows up directly in the numbers. By catching fraud earlier with Signals, card chargebacks Ticketcounter could not defend fell from around 1,500 last year to 170 this season, an 88.7% reduction.

The result: one source of truth, and time back to build

Ticketcounter now has one source of truth for its payment data. Monthly reconciliation runs against one dataset rather than several provider reports, giving the finance team a consistent view across its payment flows. When something does need investigating, Ticketcounter and Rootline work together closely, and look at the same data.

Bakker describes a partnership rather than a purchase, close enough that he has occasionally asked Rootline to slow down and let his own team fix their side first.

The practical results are straightforward:

• 1,500 chargebacks down to 170: Credit card chargebacks that Ticketcounter could not dispute fell from around 1,500 to 170.

• One to two days back every month: Reconciliation that spanned four providers now runs from a single source.

• Four logins down to one: Every Ticketcounter entity sits in one dashboard, reducing the work involved for both its finance team and accountant.

• One route for every payment: Local payment methods, cards, American Express and PayPal are brought together through Rootline.

Looking ahead: returning to the core product

With Rootline’s help, Ticketcounter has re-established the foundation of their payments proposition. Consolidated payment flows, and control over reconciliation and fraud means two things: 1) happy clients, and 2) the time and headspace to look forward, and focus on Ticketcounter’s core business and beyond. 

Comprehensive visitor management, offering insights before a partner even recognizes the need, is Ticketcounter’s next way of making their proposition even more valuable to clients. By analyzing existing system data, attractions can anticipate tomorrow’s crowds, adjusting restaurant staffing or managing parking logistics before the lot reaches capacity. Interpreting these integrated datasets represents the platform’s next evolution.

Financial data plays a critical role in this vision. Ticketcounter and Rootline are partnering up to bring agentic commerce to life in the ticketing space, by reshaping how guests find and purchase entries. 

For Ticketcounter, payments have evolved from an operational burden into the invisible infrastructure supporting the enterprise. This transition empowers the team to concentrate fully on the solutions their customers value most.

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