Commuters travelling with East Midlands Railway and West Midlands Trains can now buy app-based barcode season tickets in a major extension of sTickets, the new technology developed for the rail industry by Trainline.
Barcode technology is already popular with customers for buying daily tickets, accounting for more ticket sales by revenue across the rail industry than any other fulfilment type. However season tickets have not been widely available by the same method until now.
To improve access to season tickets and the ease of purchase for customers, Trainline developed sTicket technology on behalf of the industry over the past year to provide a secure solution for barcode tickets. Accredited by RDG in May, sTicket is fulfilled in the form of a series of time-limited barcodes which cannot be copied or transferred between devices.
The new mobile barcode season tickets are available now across most routes for both operators. Each operator can retail mobile barcode season tickets via their own app platforms for any route across the UK that has been enabled for sTicket technology, which also includes sections of the GTR, Northern and TfW routes. The same routes are also available to passengers as mobile barcode season tickets via Trainline’s own app.
Mobile barcode is offered to customers as an addition to existing paper-free options for buying and fulfilling season tickets, such as Smartcards.
Neil Grabham, Customer Services Director for EMR, said: “Following feedback and demand, our customers now have the ability to purchase their weekly or monthly season tickets and refund or change their journey options within the ticket wallet on the EMR app.
“We’ve been working with Trainline developing their sTicket technology to ensure a faster, smoother booking experience for all of our customers.”
Jonny Wiseman, WMT customer experience director, said: “We are delighted that passengers travelling on our services can now use app-based barcode season tickets. Rolling out barcode technology for season ticket users offers an efficient and paperless experience for commuters across our network.”
John Davies, Vice-President of Industry Relations at Trainline, said: “Barcode ticketing has been a huge success story across the industry for daily tickets, and we firmly believe that the same will be true for season tickets. That’s why Trainline invested in developing this new sTicket technology, and we are ready to work with more operators and retailers to help them offer commuters their tickets via a channel that has already proven so popular with customers.”
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