Flowbird Account Based Ticketing – Enabling a Frictionless Travel Future for Bus Operators and their Customers
Flowbird’s mission is to make travel easier, safer and quicker for bus passengers.
As technology partners for transport operators and authorities, the company is bringing the vision for smart, frictionless transport to life with Account Based Ticketing (ABT) – a ticketless system which typically uses contactless technology to create a record of customer journeys.
ABT enables passengers to travel in a ‘tap and go’ environment by using either a cEMV bank card (or mobile phone/ smart watch) or smart travel passes. Passengers no longer need to buy a ticket in advance, carry cash or select a fare.
With ABT, customer taps are recorded and consolidated, and the fare calculation is completed in the cloud, enabling operators to apply system wide changes more easily and apply fares rules such as daily or weekly capping for regular travellers.
“ABT was revolutionary for transport customers some years ago, but with increasingly developed features, the Flowbird ABT system delivers more integrated mobility, significant productivity gains for operators and frictionless travel for passengers.”
ABT Architectures
ABT can be deployed in two configurations:
- Open Payments, also referred to as Open Loop, which uses cEMV bank cards or smartphones as tokens to travel in a “tap on” only or “tap on tap off” environment
- ABT Closed Loop, which often uses fares media such as smart cards or QR codes
With Flowbird’s ABT architectures, these configurations can co-exist to satisfy the needs of all users, including concessionary and unbanked travellers.
Flowbird Open Payments does not require users to create an account before first use as the system generates a unique account identifier when a contactless media is first ‘tapped’. This Pay As You Go model generates a token to travel, with the back office keeping a tally of travel ‘taps’ and automatically applying any applicable local business rules, such as daily capping, to levy the best value correct fare.
“ABT is great news for travellers, operators and authorities. Well-developed systems like Flowbird’s are certified for 'tap on tap off' or 'tap on' only and we spend a lot of time helping operators and authorities develop the right business rules in the system to give passengers the best experience.
“ABT provides a foundation for integrated mobility and payments, creating opportunities for combined journey and destination experiences. Our systems go further by incorporating easy management by operators with a seamless passenger experience including ticketing and payments for mass transit, micro transit, parking and EV charging.”
This article was originally published by Flowbird Transport Intelligence.
