Masabi win contract to provide mobile ticketing for all UK train services
Rating: UK rail ticketing body agrees on one standard to apply to all regional services
Masabi is a UK company that concentrates on building secure applications for mobile phone billing and purchases. Today it announced that its mobile barcoding service has been adopted for all UK train services by the Rail Settlement Plan (RSP), the UKs rail ticketing body.
What does that mean?
The vast majority of train tickets purchased every day are by people who walk up to the station itself. There are limited options for purchasing tickets at home and over the internet, but the creation of this standard provides the first real alternative to paper tickets. Masabi’s service allows users to plan, purchase and display the tickets for their journey on their handheld device. The mobile tickets have been designed to contain enough information that even off-line and handheld ticket scanners can read them.
Also, the RSP provides for single tickets to travel across several different rail operators. This means that mobile tickets bought from Masabi will be able to take a traveler on a journey that involves multiple operators, without the need to queue for tickts at any point.
From the release:
“It’s great that RSP has now produced this new standard, but the hard work now falls to the Rail Operators to roll out systems supporting this standard, and agreeing to share tickets on routes with other barcode ready operators,” said Ben Whitaker, COO of Masabi. “Only when consumers can buy everyday walk-up tickets on the mobile will the real operator savings and consumer convenience of mobile ticketing be realised.”
“With Masabi’s help,” said RSP’s Mostafa Gulam, “we have been able to bring down the cost of implementation and raise the functionality of the system in ways we had not thought possible.”
Mike Short, President of the Mobile Data Association, said: “The trend towards paperless ticketing benefits both the passenger and rail industry as a whole; it makes travel more convenient and environmentally sustainable. Mobile phones have become the most inclusive digital device that we carry today, secure mobile bar codes offer a clear pathway towards an increasingly cash free society. Other innovations may follow, but this landmark RSP decision shows a clear way forward to serve mobile customers anywhere, anytime, anyplace.”
What we think?
I think this is the best thing I’ve heard so far today. I can only hope that this service makes it’s way over here to Ireland - I spend a lot of time on the train, and even when I reserve my tickets on-line I still have to queue for ages.
Now, it’s true that not all of the technology and infrastructure are in place to support a nation-wide rollout of this service. However, I think it’s impressively forward looking of the RSP and ATOC to make sure that when they are ready for it, every train operator in the UK will adhere to the same standard.
Thanks for the article, but a quick clarification - Masabi worked together with ATOC to produce the standard for UK Rail Ticketing on Mobile and self-printed Barcodes, and were the main driver behind the new security
but -
we have not yet been contracted to provide the day-to-day ticketing services to the entire UK, that comes down to signing deals individually with each Rail Operator, and that’s what we hope to be doing with more operators in the coming months!
The sooner Rail Operators sign up with Masabi (or other mobile ticket suppliers) to provide the new RSP enabled barcodes, the sooner we will all get the convenience of last minute purchase with no queues!
If the Irish rail operators want to do the same thing (even to the same standard if they like) they can do so if they choose, it’s simply down to the will of the Rail company executives. (as an incentive to them, every ticket sold on the mobile makes the rail company more money than tickets sold at the station!)