Cubic Makes Major Platform Play, Responding to New Competitors

U.S.-based Cubic Transportation Systems–known for building big bespoke fare-collection systems for such major cities as London, New York, Chicago and Sydney–has begun rolling out its Umo platform, targeting small to mid-tier transit agencies, in addition to its traditional customers.

With the launch, which features the company’s first-ever consumer-facing app, Cubic seeks to stay competitive as more small transit agencies move to digital payments and mobile ticketing in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and as more authorities and operators of all sizes strive to offer their customers such extras as multimodal trip planning, real-time travel information, fare capping and integrated payments spanning regions and various transport modes.

Cubic divides the Umo platform suite into six offers, which agencies can deploy separately or combine. The first to roll out is Umo Pass, which features a revamped ticketing service based on a software-as-a-service platform Cubic acquired more than a year ago. Other Umo platforms are multimodal trip planning, fleet management and real-time arrival information, rewards, faster rollout of open-loop payments and a mobility-as-a-service offer.

“The key difference of the Umo business compared to the conventional Cubic business is that it’s (Umo) a platform-based business, where I build one platform and multiple agencies connect to that platform and consume it in an as-a-service business model,” Mick Spiers, Cubic Transportation Systems’ vice president for strategy and marketing, told Mobility Payments. “Whereas, Cubic’s traditional business has been, you build a ticketing system for New York, you build one for London, and you build one for San Francisco, you build one for Brisbane, you build one for Sydney–and there are core products that get repeated from city to city, but the ticketing system is New York’s, no one else’s; the Ventra system is Chicago’s and no one else’s.”

The first 15 transit agencies to introduce Umo had been using the SaaS ticketing platform TouchPass, which Cubic acquired with its $43 million purchase of start-up Delerrok, finalized in January 2020.

Most of the TouchPass agencies are small U.S. bus operators. Cubic would provide Umo Pass in the Umo app, which offers multimodal trip planning feature–from urban-mobility app provider Moovit–as a default, said Spiers.

A key to the strategy behind Umo is to take advantage of the increased demand by transit agencies, while attempting to slow gains by such competitors as UK-based Masabi, which has been making much noise signing up transit operators in the U.S., Canada and beyond to use Masabi’s Justride SaaS ticketing platform. U.S.-based Token Transit is another competing SaaS platform provider.

Masabi and Token Transit each say they have more than 100 agencies under contract using their respective platforms. That compared with a little more than 30 for Umo earlier this year, most of them previous TouchPass clients. And Cubic faces more competition from U.S.-based Bytemark, majority owned by Siemens Mobility-which says it has at least 50 agency clients.

Cubic will continue to charge the same fees to agencies to deliver the Umo SaaS ticketing along with the Moovit trip-planning features, said Spiers, who declined to specify the fees. But TouchPass agencies have said in the past the per-transaction fixed fees range from 10 cents for small volumes down to 3 cents for larger volumes.

Spiers noted that the other parts of Umo, including the trip-planning features, real-time arrival information, rewards, open-loop payments and MaaS are targeted at agencies of all sizes. One very large agency in the U.S., which is a customer of Cubic’s, will be plugging into the Moovit trip-planning feature that will be part of Cubic’s white-label app for the agency. It’s not an Umo app.

While Umo is a consumer-facing app, Spiers said Cubic will also supply white-label apps to agencies that want their brand to lead. And in cities where Moovit dominates for trip planning, Moovit would continue to promote its branded app, which could use a payments and ticketing engine from Cubic or those of other SaaS-ticketing providers. Moovit is also working with Token Transit and Masabi.

At least 16 other agencies and perhaps more will get open-loop payments under Umo Pay by the end of 2021, said Spiers. He said Cubic has simplified the connection between the back office and payments gateway that would result in lower costs and faster time to market, but he declined to elaborate. Spiers said the advantages would include quicker certification and recertification of the implementations, not cheaper validators, though he added that Cubic is working on another project for that.

Another one of Cubic’s new platforms, Umo IQ repurposes Cubic’s NextBus product. The offer will deliver real-time arrival information to riders’ phones and includes new LED displays at bus stops and railway stations that could feature arrival alerts and other information and announcements. Like Umo Pass, which has begun moving existing TouchPass agencies to the new platform, IQ transitions 100 cities on the NextBus system to the Umo app.

Under the plan, the Umo app could eventually connect public and private mobility providers with payments and ticketing along with multimodal trip planning in a mobility-as-a-service platform. “We believe in a world where someone might catch that Uber to the railway station, and they might catch a train for the bulk of the journey,” said Spiers. “And then they might get on a Lime scooter or Bird scooter at the end of the trip, and we’re going to connect it all together, where all of the connections just work.”

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