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Busy event, no signal? How Dojo card machines keep taking payments

When thousands of people pack into a stadium or a festival, mobile signal drops. Craig explains how a Dojo card machine finds a signal anyway, so you keep taking payments.

By Craig Ashcroft
22 October 2026
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What Craig explains

At a football match or a festival, so many phones compete for the same mobile masts that connectivity drops, and a card machine stuck on one network can stop connecting. Dojo card machines carry a 4G SIM that isn’t tied to one network: it searches across providers such as Vodafone, O2 and EE, finds the nearest mast and picks up a signal.

Craig also remembers a festival where the Wi-Fi went down and the only burger van still taking card payments was the one using Dojo.

“It will search and find the nearest mast and pick you a signal up.”

Craig Ashcroft, approved Dojo partner

Why it matters

A match day, festival or event can be your busiest day of the year, and the day the signal is worst. If your card machine can’t connect, you’re down to cash only. Dojo’s portable machines switch from Wi-Fi to 4G automatically, and Dojo reports 99.99% uptime on its payments platform.

Do you know when you go to a football match and you’ve no connectivity? There’s so many people there, connectivity drops. On Dojo’s card machine, they’ve got a 4G SIM card that’s on every provider: Vodafone, O2, EE. It will search and find the nearest mast and pick you a signal up. Five years ago at Glastonbury, all the Wi-Fi went down. And there was one burger van that could take payment, and they had Dojo. And I hope you filmed that.

Transcript taken from the video’s captions.

Questions

Thousands of phones in one place compete for the same mobile masts, so connections slow down or drop. A card machine that relies on venue Wi-Fi, or on a single mobile network, can stop connecting just when you’re busiest.

Dojo’s portable card machines have a 4G SIM that can connect to different UK networks, such as Vodafone, O2 and EE, picking up the strongest signal nearby. They switch from Wi-Fi to 4G automatically.

Dojo reports 99.99% uptime on its payments platform.

Related: Hospitality · Dojo uptime explained · What happens when the Wi-Fi goes down? · Dojo Go Max

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