Smart City: Mastercard and Kisio Teaming Up to Address MaaS Industry

FACTS

• At Smart Cities NY, Mastercard announced a partnership with Kisio, Keolis subsidiary for mobility services, on launching a “Mobility-as-a-Service” (MaaS) solution.

• Improve locals’ and guests’ journeys, help transport operators increase efficiency.
• The point will be to include Mastercard’s secure payment technologies in Kisio’s route planning and ticketing features. Commuters may then look up trip routes, book and pay for their entire journey from a single app.
• Keolis joins City Possible, a Mastercard initiative to foster new forms of partnerships and create more inclusive cities.
• In line with this partnership, they plan to choose cities from City Possible’s international network to monitor and craft a Mobility-as-a-Service platform.
• Kisio’s first MaaS deployment will unfold in the Netherlands, fully integrated with local transport authorities: a pilot phase will be launched this summer.

57% of urban residents expect their cities to offer one account covering all local types of transportation

Source: Smarter Cities 2025 – November 2018

CHALLENGES

• New mobility-oriented expectations. Despite mobile media’s ubiquity, transport operators have trouble meeting consumers’ growing expectations when it comes to optimising their mobile experience. Their partnership with Mastercard will allow for the implementation of a functional platform for multimodal transport apps. Kisio says they intend to meet these new expectations.
• Digital challenge. Mastercard has been establishing several partnerships as they aim to become more present in their customers’ day-to-day digital life. They bet on Kisio to address the mobility challenge and improve commuters’ transport experience.

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• This partnership comes in addition to Mastercard’s pioneering initiatives over the past five years to establish new forms of collaboration between public transport operators and manufacturers. A year ago, this group announced a partnership with Here Technologies on launching an in-car payment system.
• Their main rival, Visa, also gives much thought to Open Payment initiatives. A month ago, they unveiled a universal contactless payment system for transport operators.
• Likewise, Citymapper also proposes a MaaS service allowing its users to pay for various transportation services through a single app.