Denver Metro Enables Enhanced Fare Payments With Masabi JustRide

The Regional Transportation District (RTD), the transit agency for the Denver metro area in Colorado, is continuing its partnership with Masabi, a fare payments platform for public transport.

Masabi will continue to provide RTD with its end-to-end fare payment platform, JustRide, which includes mobile ticketing solutions and fare payment validation to streamline the transit experience for customers and operations for RTD.

Masabi Justride offers an account-based ticketing solution, enabling customers to tap MyRide smart cards or scan the MyRide app when boarding buses or at a rail station instead of purchasing passes upfront.

Fare capping ensures customers pay the lowest fares at daily and monthly limits. This ensures all customers get access to the attractive pricing of period passes.

Doug MacLeod, chief financial officer at RTD, commented: “Our work with Masabi over the last seven years helps ensure that our customers can access the best fares. We are excited to continue our partnership and introduce future innovations to streamline and enhance the RTD customer experience.”

RTD and Masabi have worked together since 2017 and have delivered several fare payment world-firsts. These innovations look to modernise and enhance customers’ access to Denver’s public transit network.

‘Speed, scale and cost savings’

Where RTD initially deployed a mobile-only solution using the Justride platform, the solution now extends to supporting the full purchase and payment system to include other customer groups and fare media in a seamless and secure system.

In May 2019, Denver became the first city worldwide to enable customers to purchase public transit tickets and ride public transport through the Uber app. This provides customers with end-to-end travel so they can ride an Uber and then a bus or train, planning their entire trip and making payments from within a single mobile application.

Brian Zanghi, CEO at Masabi, also commented: “Our work with RTD has made Denver a global case study of the speed, scale and cost savings from the industry’s growing shift away from bespoke systems to the fare payments-as-a-service model, where multiple agencies can use the same shared platform.

“This approach allowed RTD to launch an Account-Based solution like MyRide in just 11 months and at half the cost of a bespoke alternative, saving tens of millions of dollars that can be invested in new services and solutions to improve rider experiences.”