Netpower / References / “Pay-as-you-go” for public transport
Kolumbus
“Pay-as-you-go” for public transport
Kolumbus’s “pay-as-you-go» payment feature calculates the fare from how far and when you travel.
Written by Mirjam Meling
Netpower has delivered:
A new payment solution in the mobile app
Kolumbus is a mobility provider responsible for bus and express boat services in Rogaland county. The company has won several awards for its work on efficient mobility services and digital solutions.
Netpower is Kolumbus’s regular mobile app development partner. The Kolumbus app has grown into a central part of public transport in the county. One of the highlights is the payment solution that transformed how customers pay for public transport. NRK covered the solution here.
The first version of the payment feature launched.
Pay only for the journey you actually take
“Pay-as-you-go” is a pricing model where customers pay for what they actually use instead of a fixed price. It is a flexible alternative to single tickets and season passes, and it suits travellers with a less predictable routine, or anyone making only short trips.
How it works for passengers
Netpower has built a machine learning algorithm that verifies the passenger’s route, stop and journey. The algorithm also handles payment for the journey actually taken, without the passenger having to interact with the app or with a ticket machine at all.
When a customer starts a ticket, the app collects position data from the phone and registers signals from the Bluetooth beacons installed on the buses. The phone’s accelerometer is also used to determine whether the user is standing still, walking or travelling in a vehicle.
All of this information is streamed continuously to a cloud service in Google Cloud, which analyses the data alongside position history and route data from Kolumbus. The result is a structured, accurate description of the journey.
When the journey ends, the passenger receives a receipt showing which bus was used, which stops were involved and the fare calculated for that journey.
In short: start the ticket as you board – the rest happens automatically. The ticket ends when you get off. It does not get simpler than that!
How it works for the administrator
For administrators, Netpower has built a dedicated interface where Kolumbus can log in to get a full overview of tickets, customers, receipts and the telemetry data reported for each ticket. The payment solution is integrated with the Norwegian national order database (NOD) to provide QR codes and in-app animation, so tickets can easily be checked on board.
Running the mobile app
The application runs in Azure and is built with Flutter. Parts of the app are written in Swift, Java and Kotlin to optimise battery use and tracking. The app handles several thousand active users every day.
Performance, stability and any errors are monitored through Firebase Analytics. Custom events are also tracked to gather insight into the user experience, which in turn informs further development and improvement.
Kolumbus won Kollektivprisen, the Norwegian public transport award, for its work on mobile payment.
Since the payment solution launched, the Kolumbus app has gained a long list of new features and improvements.