Travel time is when many people turn to mobile to do some browsing or shopping – but mobile is also going to be key to selling a better travel experience to shoppers too. To this end, Visa has unveiled a new programme focused on giving consumers a better experience for any mode of travel, whether by air, rail or car.
The news comes as Transport for London (TfL) announces its plans for extending the mobile network underground for tube users.
By engaging directly with airlines, transit operators, car manufacturers, rental companies, parking and fuel providers, Visa can help create innovative solutions that integrate new and emerging technologies into every kind of journey.
The Transportation Center of Excellence is a global service that brings together the power and scope of Visa’s programs including the Visa Developer Platform, Visa Token Service, Visa Ready for Transit and Visa Global Transit Solutions with its global network of Innovation Centers and Studios.
Bill Gajda, SVP, Innovation and Strategic Partnerships at Visa explains: “Today’s consumers simply want get to their next destination quickly and easily – whether commuting to work or going on holiday. Unfortunately, purchasing tickets, paying for parking or filling up the car is often inconvenient, involving long lines, complicated ticketing machines and outdated transit systems. The Transportation Center of Excellence examines how new technologies can transform the consumer experience by using digital credentials to make it easier for travel and transportation providers to seamlessly integrate payments into the customer journey.”
Improving the journey
Building on Visa’s experience in working with transportation companies such as Transport for London and Uber, Visa’s Transportation Center of Excellence is designed to improve the consumer journey.
As part of the new programme, Visa will be hosting co-creation sessions at its Innovation Centre in London with its partners in transportation, banking, and retail – with the goal to remove friction in travel and create new and easier ways consumers can access and pay for transportation.
Applying human-centred design, the program incorporates new and emerging technologies to develop capabilities in key transportation sectors, including:
- Car– According to the Business Intelligence Connected Car report, there will be more than 293 million connected cars on the road by 2025, which is why Visa is working with several of the world’s largest manufacturers to look at ways to safely and securely embed payments in on-board computer systems. Early use examples include paying for fuel, food and insurance. As consumer behaviours continue to change, future use cases may include using Visa credentials for ride sharing, insurance by the mile, and electric car recharging on the go.
- Parking– Traffic congestion worldwide is leading to the creation of more efficient ways to manage parking and transportation. In our innovation centre in London Visa is collaborating with start-ups and fintechs to implement new technologies that can help remove the pain points of finding and paying for parking.
- Public Transportation– Research from the United Nations predicts that 66 percent of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2050, making the growth of smart and efficient mass transit more important than ever. Visa’s Global Transit Solutionswhich is already focused on implementing contactless payments as an everyday way to simplify commuter travel. At the same time, Visa is also looking at what the next generation of public transportation can look like, where location services, Bluetooth and biometrics can make the journey even easier.
- Air– Visa has hosted co-creation sessions with the industry’s largest airlines, collaborating with them to address the consumer journey starting with planning, ticketing and in-flight experiences enabled through new technologies like virtual reality.
Gajda continues: “Visa has created a collaborative environment that enables developers to reimagine the consumer journey across any mode of transportation they take along with the building blocks to make that vision a reality. Through the Visa Developer Platform, they can select from a broad range of APIs (Application Program Interfaces) and SDKs (Software Development Kits) to create the next generation of commerce applications.”
The programme is led out of the London Innovation Centre and is open to companies from across the globe. Any company interested in more information should contact the Visa transportation team atinnovation.europe@visa.com.
