FARA and the National Ticket Service from Entur

As we have seen across both Europe and Norway, the public transport industry has been making a bold shift to Account Based Ticketing (ABT). In Norway, this transition is in accordance with the new Entur standard, meaning that the closed loop and card-centric standard is now being replaced by ID Based Ticketing and interoperable solutions.

FARA has been developing a new ticketing and payment solution that is integrated  into this national ticket service provided by Entur, which will include mobile ticketing and vehicle applications, in addition to other sales channel applications. This new system will also introduce contactless credit cards according to the cEMV model 2 (Transit)/MTT standardsimilar to London’s (TFL) implementation a while ago

Next Generation Ticketing: Account Based Ticketing (ABT)

ABT, also called ID Based Ticketing, creates passenger accounts for ticket and travel rights that are hosted in the cloud, rather than on any customer media. The FARA platform supports different ticketing concepts, like predefined tickets, capping and pay-as-you-go, with all transactions checked and progressed in real-time. 

The ID enables the validator to identify the traveler’s account and the stored ticket. Passengers can use various methods as an ID, for example their mobile phones, contactless cards (NFC) and barcodesThe introduction of ID based ticketing opens up new possibilities like ticket sharingbest price tickets and other exciting solutions that attract new passengers to public transport in Norway.

Advantages of ABT to public transport authorities:

  • Improved customer service, as all tickets are easily available on accounts.
  • No need for ticket media distribution, which is an enormous cost-saver.
  • Easier to have interoperable and multi-modal solutions.

Advantages of ABT to travellers:  

  • Easy and safe system that ensures the best fare price is being paid.
  • Ability to chose your preferred method of ID, from your mobile phone, contactless cards (NFC) or barcodes.
  • Ticket payment is easy, quick and accessible, due to the variety of ID methods available.
  • Parents can administer their childrens’ accounts. Whenever, wherever and directly from theirs.

FARA and the National Ticket Service from Entur 

As mentioned, FARA is closely involved with the integration into Entur’s specifications. We are working on a delivery project where we are using the Entur services and validation of ID based tickets that are stored in the ABT backend. FARA has developed a generic component for importing NeTEx data from Entur, which includes the following:

  • FARA delivers the PTA backend that links the sales applications to Entur’s ABT backend services.
  • This sales system can handle stop-to-stop ticketing, stop-to-zone ticketing and zone-to-zone ticketing
  • FARA delivers on-board applications, solution for handheld sales and inspection, a third party sales application, CRM tools for customer support, mobile app and the passenger’s self service account ‘’MyPages’’ application.

We would be happy to share with you more in-depth details on FARA’s Entur integration. You can reach us via [email protected]

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