Miki Szikszai, CEO at Snapper, will present a case study as part of the chairman’s opening remarksat Transport Ticketing Global, taking place 24-25 January 2017 at Old Billingsgate, London.
1. Mobility As A Service will be a key feature of your presentation at Transport Ticketing Global. How do you seen this new concept impacting on transport ticketing and payments?
[MS]Mobility as a Service is a response to the rapidly changing role of urban transport. As a result of major technology shifts, most importantly the maturity of the smartphone, new ways are emerging that allow customers to move from one place to another, taking into account their preferences for cost, convenience and comfort. The role of ticketing and payments will subsequently change from being a product that provides access to a transport network to an important feature that is used by customers to pay for specific journeys.
2. How can Snapper potentially or actually make a positive contribution to the development of MaaS, particularly smart ticketing?
Snapper’s experience comes from abstracting the complexity of existing proprietary ticketing systems so that that they can easily integrate into modern technologies, with a clear focus on smartphones. This is particularly important given the expectations that existing ticketing systems will need to endure for some time yet remain flexible to integrate with other systems. We expect that MaaS solutions will be based on complex integrations of journey planning, ticketing and payments, and will demand new business models. Snapper’s experience and approach will be critical to enabling MaaS solutions to be deployed in markets where they rely on integration with the existing ticketing system.
• Smartphones have now matured, enabling new solutions for transport beyond ticketing and fundamentally changing the role of ticketing in the transport ecosystem;
• To navigate this changing world, its important to focus on what is the job that transport and ticketing is hired to do, and by whom. We can learn a lot from this approach.
• A customer centred approach is necessary to make this transition – this needs much more than technology, it relies on a blend of agility, experience, new talent and new management techniques
4. Where do you hope to see MaaS in ten years? Having an impact worldwide?
The concept of MaaS will underpin the way that transport is used in cities globally. The actual form will vary from market to market, with new players from other sectors taking on important roles. The industry will need to keep an open mind – this can be a threatening concept but it will happen and should be embraced as it is driven by the travelling public, not the technology providers or transport operators.
For more information about the Transport Ticketing Global conference programme and specifically Miki’s case study, please visit: www.transport-ticketing.com
Miki Szikszai biography
Miki Szikszai has served as CEO of Snapper Services since February 2009. Under Miki’s leadership, Snapper has led the contactless payments market in New Zealand including operating the country’s first commercial NFC mobile payments service. Since mid-2014, Snapper has been offering its mobile services to other transport ticketing schemes around the world.
Snapper, in partnership with Vix Technology, has successfully deployed its mobile reload application to the National Transport Authority in Ireland and has been subsequently selected to provide its services to other ticketing schemes internationally. Miki takes a broad interest in innovation in the New Zealand market and currently serves as a Director of Spotlight Reporting.
