Stagecoach Supertram
Stagecoach Supertram serves the city of Sheffield providing an invaluable and reliable service year round. The company’s tram routes take passengers to the most popular places in and around Sheffield and Rotherham with onboard conductors validating and selling tickets.
The company was in need of a ticketing system that gave more choice to passengers when buying tickets, opening up the ability to pay onboard using contactless and card payments for the first time.
TicketPoS was selected to replace existing handheld ticketing devices ensuring that the company would have a scalable and flexible handheld ticketing solution.
Prerequisites were that the handheld terminals needed integral paper ticket printing functionality, as well as being ITSO compliant, PCI DSS certified, and be capable of processing EMV 1 payments.
In addition, the solution needed to support Industry Standard QR code specification and support contactless as defined by TFN’s EMV 2 Abbot best value fare solution.
Features
- MaaS solution enabling travel across multiple services (including Bus and Tram)
- Ticket Validation – all types
- Card and contactless + cash sales
- Onboard via Go2 handheld terminals
- Pre-booked and walk-up sales
- Integration with Vix & live schedules and fare management
- Cash management
- Reporting
The Go2 presented the ideal hardware option, running TicketPoS software, thanks to its all in one design, whilst ECR’s Cloud-based TicketPoS solution presented the client with the ease of use and full accessibility that was required.
An additional benefit was ECR’s completion of ITSO accreditation for the Go2 in a record 3 months, which is testament to the commitment and expertise of the ECR technical and development teams.
The device design was adapted, and we worked in conjunction with ITSO to achieve certification in the given timescales, despite this typically taking 12-18 months. Supertram also needed to take all payment types plus required that the new ticketing system hold ITSO accreditation ensuring that concessionary card holders could use their ITSO cards to travel. Also, as well as being mobile, onboard users needed the ability to be “hands free” so they could use both hands to steady themselves on the move. ECR have designed carry cases to ensure that this requirement was met.
One final challenge was to combat chargebacks where offline payments made on card were declined by the bank. The new ECR TicketPoS solution uses forward authorisation to accept contactless payments in offline mode and protect against chargebacks, presenting huge savings to the client.
Outcomes
TicketPoS today offers Supertram passengers the widest variety of payment options across all Supertram’s ticket & product range, fast and reliable processing, accepting etickets scanned from any format (print at home, mobile device etc), as well as closing the gaps on lost fares.