64 % of all journeys are made on digital tickets, just a year after the system was introduced: that is one of the achievements obtained with the roll-out of INIT’s Fare Management and Clearing System MOBILEvario and contactless ticket machines on all of National Express West Midlands’ (NXWM) 1600 buses since February 2018.
A precondition for this ticketing solution was receiving the in-depth EMV* (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) accreditation and thus achieving full compliance with VISA and Mastercard’s latest transit implementation guidelines.
After having implemented level 1 of EMV, papertickets and ITSO-card based transactions in February 2018 on a first pilot scheme in Coventry, it took INIT and National Express West Midlands only eight months to get ready for level 2. In order to receive this accreditation for National Express, INIT’s open loop account-based ticketing solution underwent rigorous testing scenarios successfully.
Immediately after, literally over night, all 1600 buses were switched to level 2 and were thus enabled for contactless payments. Now, passengers can use their credit cards or mobile phones in order to pay fares. All they have to do is tap their credit card or their mobile phone after having installed a payment app such as Google Pay or Apple Pay on the passenger terminal PROXmobil as fare capping, one of the MOBILEvario modules, makes sure they are never charged more than an adult day ticket, no matter how many trips are made during the particular day.
Managing Director
INIT Innovations in Transportation Ltd
United Kingdom
This article was published in our customer magazine INITiative, issue 2/2019. If you want to receive the magazine regularly per e-mail, we kindly ask you to subscribe.