Achieving success in urban mobility payment acceptance
Introduction
The potential benefits of open loop ticketing to transport agencies and the travelling public have been well advertised, from lower cost of operation, improved customer convenience and the potential to form a basis for a Mobility as a Service (MaaS) scheme. In this piece, assuming a business case exists, we look at the subject from a different perspective and explore the practical steps that agencies and suppliers might take to make their open loop delivery programs more successful.
Government mandate
Central to any open loop implementation is that the program and dates are committed to and mandated by the government, ideally up to the Ministerial level. It might sound counter-intuitive to draw attention to delivery dates, but it helps ensure there is an executable plan that all sides believe in and have committed to up-front. Such public commitment of any government will maintain focus through the respective executive leadership teams, to help ensure date commitments are met.
Strong executive sponsorship
At an executive leadership level, within the procuring agency and supplying organisation, to maintain team focus on objectives, dates, dependencies and supplier delivery, strong sponsorship is fundamental. The executive sponsors are primarily responsible for the success of the project and hence must make sure that the right guidance and resources are provided to the respective program teams.
Change management
There are likely to be many internal process changes within both the supplier and agency when adding open loop particularly in the space of customer communication, customer support and financial processing and reconciliation. Application of a thorough change management process is key to program success.
Strong relationship with bank and schemes
Commercial agreements and technical support are required from the acquirer, processor and the payment schemes and it is crucial that they are brought in as part of the program and that the commitment of their executive management and teams to the program dates is maintained.
Program management
Any implementation of open loop ticketing requires experienced program management capability on both the customer and supply side to harness resources, apply them appropriately and deal with the interdependencies and obstacles. These are complex programs; technically, commercially and from a business process and change perspective. They are at the intersection of traditional fare collection and payments implementation and hence it is for this reason that it is also recommended to have payment industry expertise on the team. Ideally, this expertise should be familiar with the local payments market as there are nuances from a technical perspective and ideally it helps to have local contacts across the acquirer, processor, and scheme organisations.
Good governance underpinning customer relationship
With the Minister and respective executive leadership of all stakeholders behind the program, a critical factor for success is maintaining a strong delivery relationship between the supplier and customer. Like any large, complex program, there will be challenges and there may not always be agreement, but an industry standard governance model and commitment to maintaining a respectful and professional working relationship should help navigate even the most difficult obstacles.
Reliable technical solution
It goes without saying that your technical solution must be tested and reliable before giving full public access. In addition to your standard integration and performance testing, it is recommended that there is a period of controlled testing in the field, followed by a field trial where the full end-to-end production solution is used in anger by a selection of the public. It is typical that this field test and trial will identify any remaining issues (not detected during formal testing) that might impact the public use of the system at scale. It also gives time to bed-in the business process changes behind the scenes, particularly those regarding support and financial reconciliation.
In conclusion
These steps can apply equally to small or medium sized agencies, for smaller programs or to the larger state-wide mega-programs. It is hoped that they will come in useful and give the program a foundation for success.
This article was first published in Smart Ticketing Insights in collaboration with Cybersource, November 2022.