We catch up with Paul Rogers from Flowbird Transport Intelligence to find out about their presence at Euro Bus Expo, on stand T84.
Tell us a bit about your company:
Flowbird is a global business with a mission to make transport easier, safer and quicker for people to make better journeys, whatever the mode of transport.
Our systems are central to the successful operation of transport networks in the UK, Europe, North America and Australia, including Edinburgh – where we support Lothian Buses with Open Payments and Account Based Ticketing – and in London, Belfast, Paris, Monaco, Helsinki, Brussels, New York, Algeria and Perth (Australia).
Our ability to integrate multimodal ticketing with payments drives innovation in Account Based Ticketing, Open Payments, mobile platforms, electronic ticket machines, cloud back-office platforms and front-end retail and validation systems. We help deliver bus networks that are better integrated and more responsive to customer needs, making it easier for people to access and pay for both their journeys and a growing range of transport-related services, such as parking, EV charging and leisure attractions – all through a common user interface.
This expertise is proven to help city and transport authorities improve social cohesion, stimulate economic development and promote the modal shift that supports a more sustainable way of living and working.
Our integrated solutions – coupled with ongoing and significant investment in R&D – drive innovation to enhance urban mobility, reduce congestion and make mass and micro transit more accessible.
We are unique in transportation markets in combining fare collection and ticketing expertise with an end-to-end payment processing solution across multiple payment points (card reader, web pages, mobile app. etc).
Thanks to our omni-channel Central Acceptance Scheme, we can provide operators and authorities with a payments suite built on configurable modules. The system works in conjunction with online/mobile apps and ‘Card Present’ and ‘Card Not Present’ channels, and offers virtual-to-physical payments and vice versa.
We’re bringing the vision of seamless, smart urban mobility to life.
Tell us about your latest products, services, promotions or launches that visitors can hope to see on your stand:
Visitors to the Flowbird stand can explore a technology journey embracing ABT, Open Payments, all-in-one mobile solutions, front end retailing and validation, back office systems, and innovations in fleet management, payment services and associated markets.
• Open Payment Account Based Ticketing
Flowbird’s new Sesame Account Based Ticketing enables contactless Pay-As-You-Go travel for passengers by using cEMV bank cards (or mobile phones/ smart watches) or smart travel passes.
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.
Our ABT and payments expertise, coupled with the CloudFare multi-vendor back-office platform, provides a foundation for integrated mobility and payments, making travel seamless.
• Mobility-as-a-Service
Our Mobility-as-a-Service mobile applications make it easy for people to plan, book and pay for travel, parking and a range of associated services. For example, in Monaco, the Monapass app provides unified access to journey planning, ticketing and payment for bus services, e-bike share, on-street parking and combined journey and destination/events. The app can also host other third party ID-based passes and subscription accounts through a new ‘open ticket portfolio’.
• Devices & Applications
Flowbird driver consoles, electronic ticket machines (ETM), handheld terminals and passenger validator solutions provide fast transactional performance required by bus operators. Based on a future-proof Android operating system architecture, all devices support contactless bank cards, open loop payments and multiple smart card standards including ITSO and Calypso, offering operators a suite of solutions for their fare collection requirements.
Options include Barcode/QR code reader, NFC mobile compatibility and BLE beacon for close proximity messaging.
Why is exhibiting at Euro Bus Expo 2022 an unmissable opportunity for you?
Euro Bus Expo is the premier bus industry event of the year – and provides opportunities for networking, meeting customers and, for Flowbird, communicating market innovations.
This year, there is a particular focus on the cost-of-living crisis and the role that bus operators will play in supporting their customers through these challenging times. Indeed, the government has just announced a £2 flat bus fare in England that will run from January to March next year.
We’re looking forward to conversations about implementing not just this flat fare environment but democratising access to best available fares through capping.
Flowbird’s Sesame Account Based Ticketing system provides a ‘pay as you go’ environment in which customers benefit equally from regular travel without needing to purchase travel passes upfront. So, for example, with Sesame, operators can set caps for a given number of journeys by day, week or month, and as soon as the threshold is reached, a cap is applied, enabling passengers to travel for the rest of the period without any additional payment.
Critically, capping is seamless from both a user and operator perspective. Whether it’s closed loop or open loop cEMV using contactless bank cards or smartphones and devices, the cap is automatically applied by CloudFare ABT, Flowbird’s modular back office.
Simply being able to ‘tap and go’ safely in the knowledge that fares are the best available – and will be capped at a certain threshold – is not only good news for consumers, it also helps operators increase ridership, collect data to improve services, and speed up passenger throughput.
Flowbird’s Sesame ABT coupled with our CloudFare ABT back office module manages the entire ‘contactless and capped’ process, with operators able to set the cap level, manage their assets, and configure fares remotely. Sesame is an enabler for BSIP plans.