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How your customers will buy tickets tomorrow?

mobile ticketing tomorrow

Mobile Purchase

Over the past 10 years, e-commerce has exploded, with many consumers becoming increasingly comfortable with purchasing online. The next logical step for consumers who are looking for even more convenient methods of doing business is mobile purchase. This trend will be accelerated by the increased functionality of today's mobile devices - Smartphone’s.

Mobile Tickets can be purchased in a variety of ways including online, via text messaging or over the phone from a voice call, WAP page, or a secure mobile application. For repeated purchases such as daily train tickets, mobile applications or text messaging are good options. The drawbacks to text message purchasing is that either the vendor loses 40% of their revenue to the mobile operator, or any credit card purchase has to be achieved through a web page as the SMS has no security suitable for credit card entry, and very few ticket choices can be easily remembered and entered by SMS.

SMS Purchase

SMS purchase is usually achieved by sending an SMS message containing a short code (e.g. GV for a single adult ticket in Gothenburg, Sweden) to a service number. A return message is sent containing the mobile ticket. Different ticket types can be ordered with a different code (e.g. GU for a youth ticket or GN as a night tariff ticket in Gothenburg). The use of different ordering codes enables creating a variety of ticket types; either time- or distance based pricing and different zone systems.

In some cases, the price of the ticket can be added to the user’s mobile phone bill or debited from their pre-paid service using premium SMS billing, however, in most countries the tariff rates do not allow for the cost of a ticket to be billed to the phone. The main business limitation is that when premium SMS is used for billing, around 40% of the transaction value is retained by the mobile operator and sms aggregator, which is not viable when the ticket has a conventional profit margin. Other methods for billing include having a mobile wallet that allows the phone user to charge their credit card.

Online Purchase

Online purchase is still an option for mobile tickets, allowing the user to setup an account and choosing payment options etc.