The second day of the Milan show continued in a similar vein to day one, with lots more exciting discussion around the possibilities for mobile within the transport ticketing ecosystem. In the opening main session Masabi’s Co-Founder and Head of Innovation Ben Whitaker presented alongside Shashi Verma from Transport for London (TFL) who explained the huge success that the operator has seen with the introduction of contactless bank cards into their system. This was particularly interesting in the light of this week’s new from Apple around Apple Pay launching in the UK, meaning that mobile payment will be soon widely usable on the London system both with iPhones and the Apple Watch.
Ben then gave an excellent overview of how mobile can provide huge benefits for both passengers and operators though enhanced customer satisfaction and cost savings. He also explained Masabi’s ‘mobile first’ strategy with the eventual aim of supporting a wide range of different tokens as tickets (such as contactless bank cards, smart card, Bluetooth, Barcode etc.) making use of “whatever the consumer has in their pockets”.
Also at the conference Laurent Kocher from Keolis explained the company’s vision of Plan-book-ticket: A complete digital platform for connected passengers and the key role that mobile plays within that equation, demonstrating their trip planning service and talking about future plans around a global/local approach using open source and SAAS technologies.
Elsewhere at the show companies like MXData, Moovel and CityMapper were demonstrating a range of travel information apps – these make ideal companion solutions to mobile ticketing systems and this ecosystem has also seen massive growth.
If you are still the show today drop by the Masabi Booth (4D 126) to see our mobile ticketing solutions in action!