Challenge

Paris-based Shotgun has continually adapted to rapid changes in the live event market since its launch in 2014. Shotgun’s original customers were organisers of small, community-driven events in France. But beginning in 2021, Shotgun saw opportunities for growth by expanding into new countries and working with larger venues, promoters, and festival organisers.

Capturing those opportunities called for significantly broader reach and power from its payment technology. To expand its services outside of France, Shotgun needed to support payments in multiple countries. It also needed a way to simplify the onboarding process for new customers in each market. This international expansion required improvements in Shotgun’s fraud management system, as the company had seen a broader range of fraud risks amid its push into these markets. What’s more, Shotgun wanted to increase protection against issues such as chargeback costs, which are higher for certain types of payment methods.

As Shotgun’s customer base expanded to include larger event organisers, promoters, and venues, the company needed to elevate its customer experience. Shotgun recognised that more ticket buyers wanted a seamless and highly personalised experience that included more payment options. For instance, younger customers increasingly preferred paying with digital wallets and other mobile payment methods. Meanwhile, higher ticketing prices for larger events triggered demand for buy now, pay later payment methods.

Finally, the company also needed to offer a full-service payment solution that supported purchases beyond ticket sales. It wanted to give event organisers the ability to take payments on-site for purchases such as food, beverages, and merchandise – and to easily pay vendors, musicians, and venues.

Solution

Working with Stripe since the beginning provided Shotgun with a strong foundation to support its growth. Shotgun has relied on its core Stripe Connect and Payments integrations to improve its payment system and keep pace with the fast-changing market for live events.

“We prioritised integration speed to stay aligned with these changes, allowing us to rapidly test and refine new features, such as flexible payouts for organisers and additional payment options for users,” said Tristan Le Corre, Shotgun’s co-founder and CEO.

Using Connect as the backbone of its ticket marketplace enabled Shotgun to expand into countries such as Portugal, Brazil, and the US with no additional development work and no need to establish local entities or bank accounts. While Shotgun manages its own customer onboarding process, it relies on Connect webhooks to automatically update its user profiles.

Shotgun implemented Stripe Radar to address additional fraud risk related to its international expansion. Radar’s machine learning algorithm draws on transaction and fraud data from millions of global companies to more effectively block fraud attempts while continuing to process legitimate customers.

To enhance the payment experience for ticket buyers, Shotgun transitioned from the legacy Card Element to Stripe’s Optimized Checkout Suite in 2024. The Optimized Checkout Suite includes a set of embeddable UI components through Stripe Elements. While credit cards have been Shotgun’s most widely used payment method, the Optimized Checkout Suite enabled the company to easily support wallet payment methods such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, as well as local digital payment methods such as Pix in Brazil and MB WAY in Portugal. It also gave event organisers the ability to deliver buy now, pay later options to eventgoers.

In 2025, Shotgun will support on-site ticket sales and food and beverage purchases by implementing Terminal with Stripe Tap to Pay – a payment solution that enables users to make contactless payments with physical cards and digital wallets directly on iPhones and Android devices. Event organisers who choose to enable Tap to Pay at their events can directly sell products through their connected apps. That integration also helps Shotgun provide organisers with unified payment data from each event, and makes it easier for organisers to manage payouts to the third-party vendors and artists who are at the core of live productions.

Results

Shotgun grows its payment volume from €30M to €200M in 3 years

Shotgun credits the easy implementation of Stripe products – including Connect – with helping to fuel the company’s continued growth. “With just a few lines of code, we could start processing payments and generating revenue right away,” said Le Corre. “Stripe has allowed us to scale our business dramatically over the past 10 years.”

Connect boosts international processing volume to 20%

Shotgun’s international expansion was made easier with Connect, which has simplified compliance and tax management issues as the company has entered new markets. Now, the company processes ticket sales in 49 countries, and its international business makes up 20% of Shotgun’s overall processing volume.

Apple Pay and Google Pay make up 50% of European payments

Shotgun’s integration of the Optimized Checkout Suite enabled the company to quickly offer an expanded menu of payment options. Customers have embraced the addition of digital wallets, with one in two European payments happening through Apple Pay and Google Pay. Shotgun also used the A/B testing feature of the Optimized Checkout Suite to evaluate the impact on conversion rates before rolling out MB WAY in Portugal. Now, more than 45% of all payments in Portugal are made through MB WAY.