The consortium that consists of Worldline [Euronext: WLN], the European market leader in the payment and transaction services, and Conduent, was selected by Île-de-France Mobilités (IDFM) to build the central ticketing system as part of its Smart Navigo Ticketing Modernization Programme. Alongside IDFM’s other technical partners, the consortium has now delivered the first building block to give passengers in the Ile-de-France (Paris) region access to smartphone-based tickets. Initially, the service will be rolled out for users of Samsung smartphones and for smartphone users on the Orange network. Shortly thereafter, all Android smartphones with NFC functionality will be able to use the service.

The Smart Navigo program, launched in 2016 by Valérie Pécresse, President of the Regional Council of Île-de-France, aims to make life easier for the region’s passengers by harnessing the full benefit of new technologies. In particular, the goal is to provide passengers with more flexible products such as pay-as-you-go solutions, develop ticketless channels to cut down on the need for ticket machines and offices and to phase out magnetic strip tickets. A preliminary version of the Navigo Liberté+ pass is also being trialled. Product users can travel around freely (metro and buses, for the time being) and are charged for the journeys they make afterwards.

These services are the first concrete building blocks mapping out a revolution in Île-de-France Mobilités’ services. The goal is to switch all fare collection over to ticketless solutions and, ultimately, to make purchasing, use and after-sales solutions for fares and also the many benefits of a personal mobility account — pre- or post-payment, journey mapping, season tickets and multi-service applications, and so on, available to all passengers.

For Worldline and Conduent, the success of this first challenge reflects the effective collaboration between all players in the ecosystem and its numerous partners. For this keystone project transitioning from conventional ticketing solutions to new forms of passenger interaction and governance, 14 information systems needed to be hooked up to each, and teams in five locations across France—Lille, Lyon, Paris, Valence and Nantes—all swung into action, with numerous contributions from participants throughout the ecosystem.

To meet the very tight deadlines, Worldline and Conduent focused on using proven standards-compliant technology, and this helped to minimize the impact on existing systems.

The Worldline-Conduent consortium also played a key role in the solution’s overall integration and received active support from all the other ecosystem participants, including Wizway Solutions, Dejamobile, Instant System, Sword and Paris region transportation operators.

From a technical standpoint, the NFC system is based on Samsung’s SIM Centric and Secure Elements technologies. The rapid roll-out, just 7 months after the project was launched, was made possible through the use of proven standards-compliant products, including:

• The Atlas® central ticketing system and specifically its SVAD (Distance Selling System), which has been deployed by three transport authorities in France and is currently being rolled out with NFC technology by other networks outside France.
• The SugarCRM enterprise solution, which has been deployed to manage after-sales service.

The next stages in the project for 2020-2021 are:

• Expansion in the range of compatible handsets via the mobile channel with the introduction of Calypso Host Card Emulation. It will then be possible to use all Android phones.
• The option of using the Vianavigo application to pay for fares with Samsung Pay
• The launch of Navigo Liberté+: this plan, currently being trialled, is aimed at those living or working in the Île-de-France region. After signing up to the plan, passengers can travel freely across the transportation network and pay the following month based on the journeys they actually made. It will be the first post-paid plan.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Laurent Probst, Chief Executive Officer of Île-de-France Mobilités, commented “Île-de-France Mobilités wants to make life easier for the millions of Paris region residents and tourists who use mass transit in the Île-de France by introducing the very latest ticketing solutions. The technical solution we have chosen is both highly innovative yet one that has already proven its worth elsewhere in France and around the world in other sectors, such as banking, and leading industry players are handling the roll-out.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Gilles Grapinet, Chief Executive Officer of Worldline, added: “The Worldline/Conduent consortium is very proud to have played its part in this major and visionary program modernizing ticketing in the Île-de-France region and bringing it into the digital age. We rose to the challenge in record time. We have been working with transportation operators in France and around the world for several years on implementing innovative solutions to make passengers’ journeys easier thanks to the rapid pace of convergence between payment and ticketing solutions.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Jean-Charles Zaia, Managing Director of Conduent Transit System, continued: “I’m delighted with the complimentary technical solutions delivered by the Worldline/Conduent consortium as part of this project. Making passengers’ journeys easier is a top priority for the cities of the future as they seek to secure a thriving future and enhance their appeal further still. The Île-de-France Mobilité project is a prime example of this, and we are proud to have played our part by implementing our genuinely cutting-edge mobility services and solutions. Transportation has a bright future, and Conduent has been a major player in the sector for over 50 years now. We are thrilled to have been involved in this major project to transform ticketing, which is the first of its kind in France”.