Nokia’s Here mapping, navigation and location services unit announced it was forming the Open Mobile Ticketing Alliance (OMTA) with a number of private and public partners. The alliance will develop global standards that will allow people to buy public transit tickets from a single app on their mobile devices in cities worldwide. The vision is to provide a 'Register once, travel anywhere' system by developing open, interoperable standards with payment vendors and transit operators.
Other founding members include transportation service providers Scheidt & Bachmann and Thales, and mobile payment provider Verifone Mobile Money.
Instead of buying a ticket or reloading an electronic card, passengers will register with the service once, tapping their Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled phone at transit systems around the globe in order to travel. OMTA will help standardise the communication between phone and transit infrastructure and facilitate roaming between systems so that users can use an app they are familiar with rather than starting from scratch each time they travel to a new city.
Alliance members are expected to show OMTA-based products to consumers in several cities around the world later this year through transit agency trials. Here said that public transit authorities implementing systems based on OMTA will benefit from lower fare-collection costs, while passengers will get the lowest possible fare based on how often they ride.
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