Mobility Matters Daily #68
What matters in the world of transport, straight into your inbox
Contactless payments, and how we will actually pay for transport in the future, is having a moment
Over the last year, contactless payment globally have grown significantly. To be fair, its been forced to, with people being reluctant to touch anything that has been touched by others. During 2020 in the UK, 9 out of 10 card transactions were contactless, and the average spend in contactless transactions has grown by 29%. This has not gone unnoticed in public transport.
There is no technical reason why most public transport companies cannot accept contactless payments. What is often lacking are the mechanisms and agreements to be able to handle financial transactions through contactless. Doing so through the likes of Visa imposes charges and transaction costs that matter a lot on small margins, and if you have billions in revenue flowing through your financial system (e.g. the Rail Settlement Plan) you have to be certain that the transactions are authentic. But as it becomes a financial necessity to accept contactless payments, so it will become more popular.
From why to how fast - contactless payments and public transport | Public transport in Helsinki goes contactless | Data on contactless card payments in the UK in 2020
Creating a future mobility ecosystem is hard work, and not an exact science
Lost count of the number of Future Mobility Campuses, or commitments to developing a tech ecosystem to trial new mobility solutions? So have I. And the news that another is being developed in Shannon, Ireland, and the continued progression of the Future Mobility Zones in the UK, got me to think whether there is a secret to developing your own future mobility cluster of exciting start-ups.
What is common to the success of specific clusters is that there is an alignment of business opportunities, a constant supply of highly skilled and entreprenuerial people, a public sector that de-risks investment in new technologies and acts as a customer when it can, and for there to be readily available market. But even then, success is not certain. Sometimes, you just need some sheer dumb luck to make it work.
New future mobility zone in Shannon, Ireland | How to build a start-up ecosystem | The UK Tech Nation 2021 report of local tech ecosystems in the UK
We invite you to join in a little fun experiment
I am sure that you have noticed that we recently changed our email service provider. While Mailchimp is very good, it is quite rigid and inflexible on what you can do with it, whereas Substack really isn’t. But I digress.
Over the coming weeks, I am inviting you to be part of some little experimental changes that I will be making to the newsletter. I can’t tell you what they are, as that would ruin the experiment. You will still get the latest news straight into your inbox at 9:30 every weekday. Also, I will not be changing anything in a way where I will be selling you anything. But every week, i will be making one small change to the newsletter.
Why? It’s very simple really. I want to make sure that what I am writing is interesting. I could ask you all directly, but when i have done this on newsletters before I typically get 3 or 4 responses (we all have more important things to do). So i have taken a leaf out of the Google playbook. Make a change, monitor the results, and keep changes that have an impact.
You have no idea how much I want to share even more with you, but doing so would influence the results. If you spot the changes, drop me a line. I can promise a couple of things. In 3 months time, i will report the findings of the experiment to you. Also, i will not be tracking you individually throughout all of this.
You don’t need to do anything. Just sit back, and wait for the email to drop in every morning.