UK: Thames Clippers and Masabi to Launch Mobile Ticketing on Central London River Bus Services

April 23, 2014
Passengers will be able to use their mobile phones as tickets from this spring.

Thames Clippers today announced that they have signed a five year contract with Masabi to bring smartphone ticketing to its River Bus service operating on the River Thames. 

Thames Clippers is the leading River Bus service for both commuters and visitors to London, with the fastest and most frequent fleet on the river. They serve piers from Putney in the West through to Woolwich in the East, with a 20 minute frequency at Central London Piers. 

Thames Clippers is currently seeing strong growth in passenger numbers with the introduction of new routes and the convenience of services such as free Wi-Fi and on board Costa Coffee shops. Mobile ticketing will aid this growth further by offering customers a user-friendly way to pay as well as adding significant sales capacity without the need to invest further in infrastructure such as ticket vending machines. 

Thames Clippers will be using Masabi’s JustRide product: a cloud-based, deployment-proven, end-to-end mobile ticketing and fare collection system. It comprises award-winning apps for ticket purchase, display and validation together with back-end infrastructure for secure payments, ticket management, customer service, reporting and real-time analytics. 

“Masabi is based a stone’s throw from the Thames and many of our team are regular users of the service,” said Dennis Marshall, vice president of business development. “We are delighted to be working with Thames Clippers to dramatically increase their sales capacity, while at the same time providing added convenience to their passengers.” 

Sean Collins, CEO of Thames Clippers said, “At Thames Clippers we continually look at ways to improve the customer experience in all areas. Recently our focus has been on our ticketing systems and the introduction of a mobile system. The addition of mobile ticketing means that our passengers will now be able to buy their tickets anywhere, without the need to queue at ticket machines or fumble for the correct change. We are thrilled to be working with Masabi to be launching this system.”