Bus fares bought on mobile phones

BUS company Arriva has become the first operator in the North West to introduce mobile phone ticketing. Customers will be able to buy daily, weekly and four-weekly tickets via their mobile phones following the launch of Arriva’s m-ticketing service. It will enable passengers on Arriva’s routes in Bolton to use their mobile phones to purchase tickets and then display them to the driver. Phil Stone, managing director of Arriva North West, said: “The mobile phone is an essential part of modern life and m-tickets will give additional flexibility and convenience to our customers. “The launch of m-ticketing across all our regions will mean that millions of bus journeys will be taken using the technology. We believe this represents the largest introduction of its type in the world. “Customers can buy tickets using their phone at anytime from wherever they happen to be. It saves them searching out the cash to buy a ticket and speeds up getting on the bus as they simply show the ticket on the phone display to the driver.” He added: “This approach has great advantages over some other mobile ticketing systems as we can roll it out across our networks without any downtime for vehicles or costly on-board technology. We believe the convenience of having the ticket on the mobile will encourage more customers to take up our multi-journey tickets.” The m-ticketing service is a free application that is downloaded directly on to customers’ phones. Once downloaded, it allows people to purchase a range of tickets. Tickets can be bought either directly through the application via a registered card or by purchasing credit from any PayPoint outlet either by cash or card.
People using the m-ticketing service can save 10 per cent off Arriva four-weekly saver tickets.
The m-ticketing technology can be operated on any GPRS-enabled phone and mobile network. The service also works on Blackberry smartphones and from early 2010 will be iPhone compatible as well.