Masabi, the leading company in innovative transit ticketing and fare collection, Keolis, the world leader in shared mobility and a pioneer in the development of public transport have teamed up through the digital subsidiary Kisio Digital and FAMOCO, the leader in secure professional terminals has announced today that they unveiled a new ticket validator that will be suitable for the mass market. The validator system is expected to have significant impact on the economics of deployment.
In the past, other validators that have been developed cost in excess of £1,000 per unit. However, this new unit that has been developed by Masabi, Keolis and FAMOCO would cost hundreds per unit, meaning that there will be a whole new market segment able to adopt this mobile ticketing validator. The low cost of this new solution will also enable more companies to offer multi-door boarding which will reduce the bus dwell time and increase the average speed of the bus.
This validator will allow the transport companies to use fast and reliable scanning of 2D barcode tickets that are displayed on a smartphone screen. The scanning system will also be able to use with a smartcard and EMV based contactless cards. The wide application of this ticket validation system will offer the transport agency with an additional level of security as well as information obtained on vehicle usage and bus location. The device is currently in the middle of a trial on the public transport of the Orléans Métropole. The pilot is underway in collaboration with Keolis Orléans Val de Loire in France. It is expected that a more widespread rollout of this system will take place in the first half of 2018.
The new device costs a quarter of the market alternatives and have been developed by three companies who have highly specialist expertise and are global leaders in their respective fields. FAMOCO has provide the secure Android-based device to the project, Kiso Digital have worked on the front-end and customer application and Masabi is delivering the software that powers the device. Due to the success that has been experienced so far with the deployment of the proven Justride inspect system, the validator will be shown by Kiso at the ITS World Congress event in Montreal Canada.
Mobile ticketing is a service that many transport operators around the world have seen as an essential development. In particular, the bus market will experience significant benefits from the widespread application of a mobile ticket validation service. There will also be benefits such as reduced cash handling and an improved level of safety because of this, as well as vaster vehicle boarding times.
