Unwire mobile tickets coming to Switzerland

Unwire’s mobile tickets for buses, trains and metro travel are already a great success in the Nordic countries. Over 15 million passengers a year in Fribourg, Switzerland will also soon get the chance to jump on a train or bus with an SMS ticket on their mobile phone.

Transports Publics Fribourgeois (TPF) operates city buses, regional buses and some trains in the Swiss city of Fribourg. In close collaboration with Unwire, the streets of Fribourg will soon pave the way for the first trial involving the use of mobile payment for tickets.

“We are facing a major investment in new ticket machines. In connection with this, we also decided to give our passengers the option of virtual tickets. This will be as simple and flexible as possible, and Unwire is offering extremely effective and proven technology,” explains Grégoire Ramuz, Head of Information Systems at TPF. The project has already attracted an enormous amount of attention prior to its start-up. Both Swiss National Railroads and local transport companies of other cities will be watching from the side-lines when passengers in Fribourg are introduced to Unwire’s SMS tickets in January.

Meeting in Dubai

Grégoire explains that the project in Fribourg was conceived following a meeting with Unwire at the UITP exhibition in Dubai in April 2011. One of his immediate colleagues participated in this meeting, and he was subsequently able to report on the development of mobile tickets in Denmark and Sweden, for which Unwire was the driving force.

“Compared with the solutions for which Unwire is responsible in a city such as Copenhagen, we are starting with a very simple SMS solution. The principle is that if you have a mobile phone, then you will be able to purchase one of our mobile tickets. It will be simple and quick,” says Grégoire Ramuz. In connection with this, he emphasises that Unwire’s Mobile Ticket solution is the perfect match for TPF, particularly because the solution can be scaled up from an SMS payment set-up to a far more complex mobile service, for example with mobile websites, credit card payments and campaign tickets, etc.

“We have consciously decided not to allow ourselves to be blinded by smart mobile services, such as apps for example. Our passengers must first learn to use their mobiles as a means of payment for buses and trains. It is therefore important that we start with a solution which everyone can figure out, and which supports all mobile phones,” explains Grégoire Ramuz. “Unwire has a unique and very viable solution. You do not need to pre-register, and you simply pay via your mobile phone bill. All that is needed is that you can send a text message if you want to board a bus. The fact that it is simple and flexible is something I really like,” he adds.

400,000 tickets

Grégoire Ramuz explains that TPF sells two million tickets each year from its ticket machines at stations and bus stops. TPF hopes that the pilot project using Unwire Mobile Tickets will transfer 20-25 percent of these ticket sales over to mobile phones. “The goal is of course to get as many people using SMS tickets as possible. The introduction of SMS tickets will therefore be accompanied by a massive information campaign aimed at our passengers, because, aside from the fact that Unwire’s solution makes it simple and straightforward, we naturally want to help our customers get started with mobile tickets,” he concludes.