Sydney, Australia, 07 May 2021: IBM and customer experience start-up Nicco, together with Manly Warringah Sea Eagles, today announced the launch of a pilot for a new digital wallet hosted on IBM Cloud and leveraging artificial intelligence to improve the fan day experience at Sea Eagles home games.

Nicco’s new digital wallet solution, which will be branded ‘Manly Money’ for the Sea Eagles, allows their fans to buy food, drinks, merchandise and track payments all with the click of a button. The solution aims to reduce queues and wait times at bars, restaurants and events by allowing fans to safely and securely order from their seats. Fans can simply upload money onto their digital wallet, place their order and wait for a push notification when their order is ready.

CEO of Nicco, Richelle Nicols, said “We are really excited to launch the pilot for ‘Manly Money’ – powered by Nicco – which is hosted on IBM Cloud, with Manly Sea Eagles. It is simple to use and will deliver an improved match day experience leveraging IBM AI no matter where you are in the stadium,” Ms Nicols said.

“Best of all, it minimises the need to queue for food or drinks and allows fans to spend more time enjoying the on-field action. Importantly, it will also improve venue safety with less people standing in queues, blocking access to aisles, doors and exits. In time, the app will also provide fans with customised offers, rewarding customers for their loyalty and ultimately saving them money.”

Applying the user-focused IBM Garage Methodology, a team of IBM technology and design experts worked with Nicco to co-create the solution. Hosted on IBM Cloud, one of the industry’s most secure and open public cloud, the digital wallet solution uses IBM Watson Discovery. This AI-powered search and text analytics tool employs natural language processing capabilities over time to interpret customer profile data and share targeted offers. 

“Enabling seamless customer experience is critical for companies as they modernise their workloads in the hybrid cloud era,” said IBM Head of Cloud for Australia & New Zealand, Wesley Allen. “By working with Nicco to roll out ‘Manly Money’ with the Sea Eagles, we are helping to deliver an enhanced customer experience as fans return to the stadium. With IBM Cloud and AI technology, fans can securely make purchases from their seats and spend more time enjoying the game instead of waiting in queues.”

‘Manly Money’ – powered by Nicco – uses IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service which enables the deployment of containerised apps quickly on IBM Cloud.

Select groups of Sea Eagles fans will be able to take part in the pilot and use ‘Manly Money’ - powered by Nicco - on 11 June when the Sea Eagles take on the North Queensland Cowboys at Brookvale. The app is expected to be made available to extended groups of footy fans later this year.

About Nicco

Nicco is a cloud and smartphone solution which can be deployed throughout entire business ecosystems to connect each consumer touch point, collect previously unseen data and use advanced AI to enhance the customer experience and convenience.

For more information about IBM visit: www.ibm.com

CONTACT:
Candice Lester
External Relations, IBM Australia and New Zealand
Phone: +61 401 367 343
E-mail: candice.lester@ibm.com