INIT wins leading British public transport provider as new customer

Contactless payment for National Express West Midlands

The ticketing solutions of INIT are becoming increasingly widespread internationally in public transport. One of the five largest British public transport providers has now opted for a solution from INIT.

Installing a state-of-the-art ticketing system

National Express West Midlands, which is based in Birmingham, has awarded a contract to INIT for the supply and installation of a ticketing system. The contract covers equipping 1,600 buses with driver consoles, on-board computers/ticket printers and passenger terminals as well as the service provision via a hosted back-office system. In addition to fast ITSO card-based transactions, the solution enables the use of contactless bank cards for ticket payments in accordance with the EMV standard.

Winning National Express West Midlands as a new customer not only represents a further important milestone for INIT but also leads to further expansion of INIT’s presence in the UK. INIT is already well established in the East Midlands region close to Birmingham. Transport operators in and around Nottingham and Derby have also opted for INIT as a technology partner in the area of ticketing and fare management.

National Express is not only an important new customer for us in the UK. As our solutions are in use around the globe, is this, of course, a key benefit for an international group such as National Express.

Jens Mullak

Managing Director
INIT Ltd., Nottingham

Global trend for contactless payment

Jens Mullak, Managing Director of INIT in the UK, sees a “growing trend” for contactless payment around the world. “I think it's a gradual process. But with the popularity of contactless bank cards and the usage of mobile phones, this will surely more and more replace cash payments. INIT's innovative contactless payment solutions allow operators to offer contactless payment and/or use countless bank cards as tokens for travel, calculating the fare and fare capping in the back office.“

Signing of the contract: Matthias Kühn, Chief Operating Officer of init AG, Jens Mullak, Managing Director of INIT Ltd., and Dr. Jürgen Greschner, Chief Sales Officer of init AG, with Martin Hancock, Development Director National Express, and Paul Nash, National Express West Midlands bus driver (from left to right)

About National Express

National Express Group is a leading public transport provider in the UK. It also operates bus and rail lines in continental Europe, North Africa, North America and the Middle East. National Express has been active in Germany since 2013 and has been awarded the contract to operate a number of regional rail lines, mainly in North Rhine Westphalia. Most recently, National Express won the tender to take over the suburban rail lines in Nuremberg from 2018.

National Express West Midlands (NXWM) is the biggest single operator bus network in the country, with over 1,600 buses and nearly a million journeys each day. NXWM is one of the largest employers in the West Midlands, employing over 5,000 people. National Express signed up to the UK’s first Bus Alliance. This partnership will see £150 million invested by operators and partners between now and 2021 to tackle emissions, maximum fares and frequency.

Contact

Jens Mullak

Managing Director

INIT Innovations in Transportation Ltd

United Kingdom

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This article was published in our customer magazine INITiative, issue 2/2016. If you want to receive the magazine regularly per e-mail, we kindly ask you to subscribe.

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INIT wins leading British public transport provider as new customer

Contactless payment for National Express West Midlands