Denmark Selects List of Suppliers to Advance to Next Round for National Mobile-Ticketing Project

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Transit officials in Denmark have qualified a list of eight suppliers to compete for five vendor slots to provide technology or services for the country’s planned DKK 500 million (US$65.2 million) national mobile-ticketing system, Mobility Payments has learned.

The list of suppliers making it to the next round includes Thales RCS, Siemens Mobility’s Hacon unit, Cubic Transportation Systems and Fairtiq, along with some local software and IT consultants, Mobility Payments has learned. A total of 21 companies submitted proposals seeking to capture one of the five vendor slots that will potentially provide technology or services under a framework agreement.

As Mobility Payments first reported in late August, the planned project is unusual in that transit officials in the small Scandinavian country are expected to make a virtually hands-free check-in/check-out mobile-ticketing app the primary fare-collection method on public buses, trains, light rail and metro throughout the country. In fact, plans call for the app to eventually replace Denmark’s national closed-loop card, Rejsekort.

Danish consumers have a high rate of usage of mobile-payments at retail and all major transport modes in Denmark, including the Copenhagen Metro, are barrier free.

Transit-agency-owned fare system company, Rejsekort & Rejseplan, or RKRP, is rolling out the new ticketing technology. Among the list of eight prequalified vendors are two suppliers for its current system. RKRP has not released any of the names of the 20-plus suppliers believed to have submitted proposals or the eight that made it to the second round.

Those making the cut are believed to include France-based Thales Revenue Collection Systems, or RCS, which provides technology for the Rejsekort, or the closed-loop travel card.

RKRP said Rejsekort has 3.2 million active users, which tapped the card for 140 million trips in 2019, the last year before the pandemic. Users tap in and tap out with the cards on validators and conductors or other personnel do spot checks. The card launched in 2012 in Copenhagen after years of delays and cost overruns estimated at more than €100 million. Thales and IT services firm Accenture were the main vendors. Accenture later withdrew from the project.

Also believed to be on the list of eight is Germany-based Hacon, which provides the trip-planning technology for the Rejseplan app and APIs for the platform. RKRP said the platform today provides more than 35 million journey plans every month.

Another name on the list is U.S.-based Cubic, which is perhaps the largest fare-collection system vendor globally, with major projects in London, Sydney, New York and other cities.

And also notable on the list of eight is electronic-ticketing company Fairtiq, which offers check-in/check-out or check-in/be-out mobile ticketing throughout its home base of Switzerland, as well as for certain cities in other European countries, including Germany and Austria.

Project references were likely important to RKRP in choosing the eight vendors to advance to the next round. To whittle down the list further to the five vendors that will be covered under the framework agreements, the agency is expected to delve deeper into the vendor proposals, including pricing and licensing costs for software.

RKRP launched a trial of the mobile technology in August on trains and buses in Denmark’s North Jutland region using Fairtiq technology. Fairtiq’s deploys GPS, Wi-Fi and other location and sensor technologies on buses, trains, trams and even boats to enable users to swipe their finger in the app to check in, then swipe or just hop off the vehicle to check out.

In a procurement notice it issued in August, RKRP said that it seeks to hire five vendors to help it build a “unified digital mobility solution,” combining travel planning, booking, ticketing and payments. Users will be able to access these features across public and private modes of transport, RKRP said.

The vendors would provide development, management and maintenance of the application, along with consulting, as well as operations. RKRP itself has been developing in-house system integration capability, which it is expected to use on the project.

The fare-collection agency said the framework agreement it hires the suppliers under will not guarantee any minimum amount of purchases for a particular vendor.

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