Cubic Expands Agreement with Moovit, Seeking to Drive More Use of Mobile Apps by Transit Agencies

_{(This premium article was originally published in July 2020. © Mobility Payments and Forthwrite Media.)}

U.S.-based Cubic Transportation Systems and Israel-based trip planning app provider Moovit, now owned by Intel, have expanded their partnership to develop mobile services for transit agencies, seeking to enable transit customers to “look, book and pay” for multimodal journeys.

While the partnership is being pitched as one that would enable transit agencies to roll out mobility-as-a-service, or MaaS, apps, that could prove difficult. True MaaS rollouts–which allow users to plan, book and pay for multimodal transit in one app or platform–have so far failed to take off. That’s in part because commercial agreements and integration with third-party mobility providers, such as ride-hailing services or bike and scooter rental companies, are not easy to accomplish.  

The Cubic-Moovit agreement appears to focus mainly on enabling Cubic to provide a more attractive white-label mobile apps to its transit agency customers, combining Moovit’s trip-planning platform and huge transit data repository with Cubic’s fare collection and payments expertise, along with its account-based ticketing back office technology and its real-time vehicle and passenger data.  

Part of Cubic’s planned offer would be to enhance its TouchPass platform, which it bought earlier this year with its acquisition of U.S.-based start-up Delerrok. TouchPass, a software-as-a-service platform for fare payments, targets small to mid-tier transit agencies,  enabling them to launch mobile ticketing and other forms of electronic fare payments quickly and with much less up-front capital than a bespoke, or customized, platform, would cost. The latter has been Cubic’s main business line for years, working for large public transit agencies.  

The expanded agreement with Moovit, announced Tuesday, follows an earlier deal announced in January (2020), Under that earlier agreement, Moovit, which describes itself as the “maker of the world’s most popular urban mobility app,” with hundreds of millions of users across 3,000 cities in nearly 100 countries, allowed Cubic to integrate its mobility APIs into Cubic’s white-label mobile Traveler App.  

Public transit agencies brand this app and offer such features to customers as management of their contactless fare cards,including reloads; purchase and redemption of tickets on some transit modes, such as commuter lines; and trip planning using information from Google Maps or other mobility platforms.  

A Cubic spokeswoman in January told Mobility Payments’ NFC Times it would not drop Google or the other travel information providers from its white-labelapp, but with Moovit’s detailed data it could offer additional functionality for the app. Transit agencies in six large U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, along with a couple of agencies in Australia and Ireland, have usedthe Cubic white-label app.

With the new agreement, Cubic and Moovit say they are targeting public transit agencies of any size. In addition to integrating the cloud-based TouchPass platform, the deal also brings in Cubic’s account-based ticketing back office; its real-time passenger information system, NextBus; the loyalty, incentive and advertising platform, Cubic Interactive; and Cubic’s MaaS Marketplace. 

Cubic, in expanding the deal no doubt wants to ramp up its promotion of mobile ticketing, as demand increases for the technology from transit agencies that seek to encourage customers to return in the aftermath of the Covid-19 lockdowns. Mobile ticketing, which enables customers to buy their tickets or passes within mobile apps, allows for less touching of surfaces or interaction with transit staff by customers.  

To reach smaller public transit agencies, which want fast launch cycles for mobile ticketing and other electronic payments, enhancing Delerrok’s TouchPass platform is key for Cubic, which completed its $43 million acquisition of Delerrok in January. 

Delerrok and other providers of fare-payments-as-a-service platforms, such as UK-based Masabi and U.S.-based Token Transit, say they can enable agencies to launch mobile ticketing in a matter of weeks, even days. Transit agencies pay a percentage per transaction or of gross ticket sales or a flat fee per transaction for use of the software-as-a-service platforms.  

There are drawbacks, however, to using the platforms, including the fact that agencies can only offer the features provided by the ticketing platforms. Also, the platforms can’t really offer ticketing for large, fast-paced transit systems, at least not yet. 

On the other hand, large bespoke fare collection systems can take years and tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to roll out for larger agencies. A somewhat extreme example is the system Cubic is building for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority in Boston, whose budget has grown to nearly $1 billion and whose completion has been delayed for two years. The contract includes 10 years of operations and maintenance by Cubic.  

Moovit, in addition to Delerrok, has also worked with other fare-payments-as-a-service providers, including Masabi and Token Transit. Token Transit has introduced mobile ticketing for public bus agencies in Little Rock, Ark., and Fort Wayne, Ind., through Moovit apps, a Moovit spokeswoman told Mobility Payments’ sister publication NFC Times. A number of transit agencies offer Moovit’s white-label trip-planning app to their customers without yet enabling the users to book tickets or pay.

In addition, Ohio-based transit fare-collection consortium NEORide plans to enable customers to purchase tickets through Moovit and also through the Uber app. Members of the group already sell tickets through the trip-planning Transit app, a competitor to Moovit.

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