How to design the best experience in payments for parking and public transport tickets?

The Visa Warsaw Innovation Studio saw a need to respond to the demands of the Polish public. Payments are becoming more and more invisible and embedded in everyday life – paying for public transport being one of them. That’s why the goal was to develop a new value proposition for consumers within the Smart City area.

Visa is a global organization operating on the financial market. It deals primarily with the promotion and development of non-cash payments based on debit and credit cards. An important place in its strategy is occupied by seeking innovation and supporting breakthrough solutions in market expansion.

We all know that the growth of cities is inevitable and desirable. Our main question during this project wasn’t whether or not we are a part of this change, but what is the main challenge we can answer. Together with Visa and the experts of other financial organizations, we were developing new, smart cities solutions. The incubator team focused on solutions improving the functioning of public transport and paid parking zones.

Exploring users’ needs and problems, creating new products, validating solution concepts. These tasks required both analytical competencies such as market analysis and quantitative tests, as well as creative competencies like the ideation and creation of prototypes for ideas.

Workshops with representatives of all involved institutions (whose design and management was carried out by Innovatika’s experts) played a key part in the project.

The tools and exercises utilized were selected with the utmost care to make the best use of the knowledge and experience of the gathered participants to achieve the project’s objective – an innovative product concept responding to the identified needs and problems of the users.

To reach the desired business goal, we created an incubator for new solutions. Within the incubator, we developed two app concepts – GoBilet and ParkON. We designed and developed these applications based on the necessary functions for passengers and drivers, which makes them intuitive and able to solve real user problems.

This app is aimed both to passengers with long-term tickets and those using single tickets. GoBilet digitizes long-term tickets and allows you to purchase them directly in the app. Thanks to the possibility of automatically renewing the subscription, the user can forget about having to remember to renew the ticket. Those using single tickets will also find value. GoBilet turns the existing fixed charges into a flexible tariff, where the user pays only for the number of stops they travel. To make a payment a simple click while getting on the bus is all that’s needed. The user does not have to worry about being overcharged when using a single ticket with a limit of monthly fees amounting to the price of a monthly ticket. Once this amount has been reached, they can ride at no additional cost until the end of the period. Thus, GoBilet significantly improves the experience of using public transport for today’s passengers. It minimizes their efforts in the context of payments and ensures fair and equitable treatment.

ParkON revolutionizes the drivers’ previous experience with payments for parking – both those made at the parking meter and in existing mobile apps. It turns a tedious process into a single click and ensures that the user will always pay for the actual parking time thanks to the fact that the billing will end automatically. Local councils and parking enforcers also benefit from this solution. ParkON supports cheaper non-cash payments and reduces the number of mistakes and complaints thanks to how simple it is to use. The concept utilizes technologies present in every smartphone, like geolocation and an accelerometer, as well as in an increasing number of cars (Bluetooth). Therefore, it does not involve costly changes to the parking lot infrastructure.

The result is two inspiring app concepts in the areas of public transport charges and the use of urban paid parking zones. These implement the Smart City idea, i.e. the use of modern technologies to improve the experience of the residents and at the same time, increase the efficiency of the city. The solutions are also designed following the strategic directions of the financial industry, i.e. supporting and promoting non-cash mobile payments.