Mobile Transit Ticketing Launches in Slovakia 13. April 2021
Two regional transit systems in Slovakia have used NXP’s MIFARE 2GO digitalization service to enable mobile transit ticketing and, as a result, serve as proof that you don’t have to live in a major metropolitan area, with millions of inhabitants, to enjoy the convenience of using your mobile phone as a transport ticket.
In northern Slovakia, the public transport operator Arriva Liorbus connects Liptov and Orava regions, an area that includes roughly 260,000 people, by 140 intercity and city lines in corresponding towns. Not far away, in the central-western region around the Prievidza city, about 220,000 inhabitants are served by public bus transport. In both places, people can now use a mobile app in combination with their NFC-enabled phones to purchase tickets and board public transport.
Arriva Liorbus and SAD Prievidza both worked with the system integrator TransData to launch their mobile ticketing services. TransData has special expertise in the areas of transport, payment and identification systems, and developed the popular transit app Ubian, which lets you plan a journey and find the most direct route to your destination.
With the Ubian app installed on your smartphone, you can save your stored-value card to Google Pay and use that amount to purchase tickets. Your phone becomes your transit ticket, so you can simply tap your phone to the ticket reader inside buses, and off you go.
“Google Pay aims to create an effortless, immersive mobile transit experience for users, removing the friction of getting a physical ticket and saving valuable time for busy passengers. We are therefore excited to work with TransData and NXP to help passengers in Upper Nitra, Lipto and Orava speed up their travel,” said Jonathan Hill, Head of Transit Partnerships Google Pay.
“As the system integrator behind the Ubian app, we’re happy to enhance everyday life in Slovakia by making public transportation better,” said Stanislav Piecka, Sales Director, TransData. “We look forward to extending mobile ticketing to other cities of Slovakia with the help of NXP’s MIFARE 2GO solution.”
TransData relies on NXP’s MIFARE 2GO solution to connect transit services with multiple devices and OEMs, and to digitize the virtual MIFARE product-based transit cards. MIFARE 2GO is integrated with Google Pay, making it easy for TransData to configure the system to store digitized tickets in Google Pay.
By deploying mobile transit ticketing, regions of Upper Nitra, Liptov and Orava become part of a global community that embraces technology as a way to make public transport easier and more convenient to use. Across the world, in cities big and small, NXP has enabled successful mobile transit ticketing implementations and traditional, smart-card-based transport ticketing installations.
For more information, please visit our MIFARE 2GO product website or contact us at mifare@nxp.com.