Case study: Transport for Wales

Ticketing Hub - contactless EMV and ABT solution

The challenge

Transport for Wales (TfW) were looking for a technology partner to work with them to deliver an EMV Account-Based Ticketing (ABT) solution. The solution had to be built to manage initially over 6 million customer rail journeys a year in the South Wales Metro area by 2026, and continue to support above-target customer growth for rail travel.

It also needed to integrate with their existing mobile app and websites, transitioning these into a comprehensive service proposition which enabled their customers to travel on their services by using a contactless EMV (cEMV) bank card to tap on and tap off public transport, with payments taken from their card.

Project requirements

In winning the bid, Unicard were charged with providing TfW with the following:

  • An Account-Based Ticketing solution that enables passengers to use their cEMV cards to travel on the network, either as a guest, or through their TfW account.
  • Whilst built as a back-office solution, it must include any necessary interfaces to all devices, including Vix gates and validators.
  • The solution must include daily and weekly capping, as well as guest and account operations with a periodic collection regime.
  • All appropriate fraud management protocols had to be enabled and enforced.
  • The solution was initially designed for defined routes on the South Wales metro area as a pilot phase, with the ability to be rolled out to the wider rail network following successful completion.
  • The ABT and cEMV solution must be able to scale further and extend to other modes of transport in a future phase, enabling multi-modal use across Wales.
  • The solution should facilitate an appropriate interface for the use of the existing website and app for the management of customer service-related matters.
  • The solution should be device-agnostic, and able to calculate fares, and/or link to an RSP-accredited fares engine and potentially a fulfilment service.
  • TfW wanted the solution to be able to scale in future to allow passengers to enjoy multi-modal capping for ticketing, where customers who make both bus and rail journeys on the same day can have their fares capped appropriately.

Project solution

TfW is responsible for delivering multi-modal travel throughout Wales, with a particular focus on rail, bus and metro light rail. In 2019 they began working towards the goal of delivering contactless cEMV card payments for pay-as-you-go ticketing across train services and rail routes.

Unicard’s Ticketing Hub solution processes card taps, payments, debt recovery and tokenisation. It also ensures that passengers will always pay the best available fare across multiple modes of transport, without having to worry about pre-purchasing a ticket. This deployment was the first of its kind anywhere in the UK outside of London.

A live pilot scheme running between Newport, Cardiff and Pontyclun was launched in September 2023 to test the Ticketing Hub solution’s capability and functionality. In January 2024 the scheme was opened up to the wider customer base, ahead of a phased expansion of the service to a larger part of the South Wales Metro area throughout 2024.

One of TfW’s critical requirements was that they should not be locked into any specific hardware supplier for the gates which customers use to tap in and out at the start and end of every train journey. Unicard’s Ticketing Hub solution is designed to be completely vendor-agnostic with an open, standardised API for integration. This means that – unlike other card solutions that are tied to specific hardware – Ticketing Hub is agnostic to the card reader used. This allows it to be both multi-modal and multi-operator, as well as providing TfW with the requested flexibility to choose their equipment suppliers for gates, validators and inspection devices according to specific local requirements. This enabled TfW to successfully use Vix gates for cEMV acceptance alongside the existing Cubic gates within a single station.

Ticketing Hub is the central integration and orchestration layer for the solution, managing all aspects of the transfer of data to and from third parties. When a customer’s card is seen for the first time, Ticketing Hub securely tokenises the card information with Cybersource, ensuring compliance with PCI DSS standards; because it does not store plaintext card details, Ticketing Hub does not require full PCI certification, which reduces deployment time and compliance overheads. Ticketing Hub uses this token to manage all aspects of charging customers, as well as the management of deny lists, debt recovery and fraud prevention, for a complete payments solution. Ticketing Hub can also coordinate the exchange of payment information between different transport operators, enabling the solution to be compatible in the future with any cross-operator or multi-region brokerage initiatives.

Ticketing Hub receives and processes the customer taps into a standardised format, sending them to a fares engine managed by iBlocks, one of our strategic partners. They carry out journey reconstruction, fare calculations and capping, taking into account the customer’s travel patterns, as well as industry data such as delays, and calculate the price to be charged to the customer – dynamically recalculating if the customer continues to travel during the capping period.

The data contained in Ticketing Hub is completely integrated with the various customer-facing channels of the scheme, allowing TfW to offer a customer proposition that improves on similar schemes throughout the country. A standardised, real time API connects to the existing websites and mobile app, offering customers the ability to self-service their needs. Any user of the scheme is able to view their recent journey and payment history, and submit missing taps for incomplete journeys, just by using the card number. Passengers also have the ability to register with the website and access enhanced functionality including full journey and payment history and usage exports. Uniquely for a PAYG scheme, registered users can opt in to receiving push notifications when the system detects a missing tap, helping them to avoid penalty fares, and benefit from automated Delay Repay functionality when their travel is disrupted.

Customers who are unable to self-service can instead call an in-house customer service contact centre, who have secure access to the customer’s data and journeys and fix any issues or issue refunds through an API link to the Ticketing Hub. To help manage call volumes, the system is also integrated with an Interactive Voice Response tool for common administrative tasks.

Another unique aspect of the solution is that all customer contact points are available as a fully bilingual service in both Welsh and English, in order to support TfW’s commitment to the language and culture of Wales.

Data from Ticketing Hub is also available to TfW’s business intelligence tools, including Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Power BI, to facilitate improved Customer Relationship Management and advanced data analysis.

By using Ticketing Hub, TfW were able to leverage Unicard’s expertise to ensure compliance with an array of standards and assurances, including PCI DSS, Rail Delivery Group standards for railways data and ticket sales, EMVCo standards for the use of contactless cards in transit, and WCAG guidelines on accessibility of web properties. Compliance with these standards is not only a requirement for delivering the scheme, but also an important part of ensuring customer data remains protected and any reputational or financial risk to TfW as the operator of the scheme is minimised.

“This was a strategic and high-profile project for us, and we’re delighted at the step-change in the ticketing experience we’ve been able to provide our customers by implementing Ticketing Hub ... We are proud of the strong partnership we’ve developed with Unicard, and they made the process as easy as it could be."

Helen Mitchell

Head of Portfolios and Programmes, Transport for Wales

This was a high profile and complex project, with eight suppliers for the core provision alone. A clear vision, strong governance, and timely decision-making from TfW were essential to the project’s success. Integration with other suppliers was a central requirement of the project, and we took a leading role in this process as the principal technology supplier by defining the standardised APIs to be used between partners: providing integration support to iBlocks, Imaginet and Vix, as well as taking part in data testing and overall coordination of the integrations, and managing the certification of the finished solution with the payment card schemes.

Helen Mitchell, Head of Portfolios and Programmes at TfW, said of the project: “This was a strategic and high-profile project for us, and we’re delighted at the step-change in the ticketing experience we’ve been able to provide our customers by implementing Ticketing Hub. We felt there was a notable gap in the market for implementation of cEMV on rail, and so we wanted to not just copy what was out there already, but put our own unique spin on the customer proposition and really push the industry standard forwards.

“As with any initiative of this scale, we had challenges to overcome – particularly the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in the middle of the implementation. We are proud of the strong partnership we’ve developed with Unicard, and they made the process as easy as it could be.”

Future plans

Now the initial technology foundation for the scheme is in place, TfW have planned a number of future initiatives and expansions to the scheme, including:

  • A solution for using multiple payment devices to travel in a single journey, matching up the devices using Payment Account Reference
  • A fully multi-modal offering across rail and bus
  • The ability to use railcards and concessionary discounts within the ABT system
  • Geographic expansion into more areas of Wales

In terms of future plans for the solution, Helen said: “We’re looking forward to continuously expanding and improving our offer for passengers in Wales, particularly as we grow the number of potential users we can service. As we expand, we think it’s important to engage with other operators to develop integrations and share knowledge, as well as pushing forward the overall standard of cEMV for transport.”

Key outcomes

For the travelling public of Wales, the solution provides truly seamless travel, and a retail experience that closely aligns with customer demand for ease of use. Passengers no longer need to queue for tickets, apply for a travel card or change their ticket if their plans change. They can simply use their bank card or payment app on their mobile device to catch a train and enjoy the convenience of contactless travel.

Our solution means TfW can be confident that it is ready to handle any future changes in suppliers, standards, tokens or passenger behaviour, as Ticketing Hub is built to be a multi-reader, multi-operator, multi-modal, multi-acquirer and multi-token solution. If necessary, the system can be extended to support contactless payments across other modes of transport, such as trams and buses.

Phases 1 and 2, comprising 11 stations in the South East Wales Metro area, have led to:

  • 50,000 passenger journeys made using Pay-as-you-go
  • 53% of taps being made with physical cards, and 47% using mobile wallets and wearables
  • 55% of users have registered their account and 45% are travelling anonymously
  • Customers have benefited from almost 7,000 capped journeys, with capping applied at both a daily and weekly level
  • Over £120,000 in industry revenue generated
  • Rapid and significant growth of Pay-as-you-go since launch, which is already the 4th most popular retail channel on live flows

Customer background

Transport for Wales was set up by the Welsh Government in 2016 to change the way Wales travels: to make sustainable travel a natural choice and to help combat the climate emergency.

They are driving forward the Welsh Government’s vision of a high-quality, safe, integrated, affordable and accessible transport network that the people of Wales are proud of.