Fare evasion costs UK rail operators in the region of £240m annually. Tackling fraudulent travel by those travelling without a valid ticket, providing false information or more complex avoidance techniques has always been an on-going challenge. 

Now, evading payment by exploiting technical complexities in the current penalty system will soon be a thing of the past as Spire Payments teams up with ITAL to deliver an mPOS based penalty notice system called PayMe.  

Taking payment on the UK national rail system has always been inefficient and slow for revenue inspectors when issuing penalty notices and the out of date systems haven’t been easy for passengers to negotiate either.  The PayMe payment solution streamlines the entire process by utilising Spire Payments’ latest generation mPOS device; the SPm2. This device links with the PayMe app residing on the revenue protection officers’ mobile phone or tablet, which in turn links in real time to a cloud based central system monitored 24/7/365.

On issuing a fine, the revenue inspector can process payment immediately, while the central system can check cardholder identity. This not only results in settlement within 3 days, but prevents fraudsters giving false information because inspectors can administer a real-time name/address check. Data collected from the system gives valuable information about evasion hot spots on the network. The solution is already approved by Barclays and the pilot has been successfully completed with Greater Anglia trains. Roll out will commence imminently.

ITAL is a UK based company providing telephone, mobile and cloud-based technologies for leading businesses, making their processes simple.

Derrick Bilsby, Chief Executive Officer of ITAL, says of the project, “This is an extremely exciting time for ITAL and its many customers. PayMe has already been shown to deliver immediate efficiency savings and customer service improvements for UK train operators, but this is just the first implementation. Multiple growth sectors in our sights include field-workers, taxi fares, mobile service & repair, pop-up parking etc. Ongoing development of the central system will bring on new capabilities based on the very successful pilots with Abellio Greater Anglia and C2C train operating companies.”

TK Cheung, President of Spire Payments, adds, “This is yet another example of how Spire Payments’ mPOS technology has enabled a customer to develop an extremely powerful solution. The fact PayMe in conjunction with the SPm2 can take mobile payments is just one, but an essential facet of this solution. Linking to the cloud, however, is the real enabler and offers huge potential for any environment requiring mobile payment and real time cardholder checks.”