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A woman is standing on a bus next to a contactless ticket machine, looking at her smartphone.

VDV eTicket Service: Travel made easy

With T-Systems' cloud billing solution, travelers and transport providers benefit from the digitalized process

Traveling more conveniently thanks to digital services

VDV eTicket Service logo

VDV eTicket Service (VDV-ETS) unites around 440 companies from the public passenger transport sector under the umbrella of (((eTicket Deutschland. On behalf of these companies, VDV-ETS publishes the German standard for (((eTickets and supports the industry with the digitalization of sales. As early as 2003, VDV eTicket Service offered an eTicket service for various transport companies, a service that was constantly expanded, for example, to include contactless payment. The objective of (((eTicket Deutschland is to introduce nationwide electronic fare management (EFM) for users of local and long-distance public transport.

Customer benefits

  • Digital solution allows the introduction of a customer-focused service with automated clearing between the different public transport providers
  • Scalable platform without investment risk with usage-based costs for future growth
  • Availability of nationwide product and price information (fare server)

In releasing a complete cloud billing package for product and claim clearing from Open Telekom Cloud, we have laid a cornerstone for the digital networking of public passenger transport.

Nils Zeino-Mahmalat, Managing Director of VDV eTicket Service

New user experience for travelers

Woman sitting in bus, looking at smartphone, pictograms of bus, plane and other transportation appeared as holograms.

Until now, it was not possible to obtain information on the total price of a fare for trips taken with various transport associations that use different providers. Users planning trips through multiple regions did not receive general travel information, including product and price. This was because Germany had no nationwide product and price database that contained fares for all of Germany’s public transport networks and used them to calculate prices for selected routes. Without exact information on prices, integrated booking was also not an option, which meant that the traveler had to find their way on their own. Only when timetable and fare information became available throughout Germany would integrated querying, booking, and payment be possible.

New options for customers call for a digital foundation

But an integrated ticket for a traveler poses a new challenge: How will the incoming payments from the traveler be correctly distributed to the respective transport suppliers? The cloud billing solution from T-Systems handles this clearing of claims. The solution is based on individual modules in a microservice architecture that are connected via standardized APIs (interfaces). This type of software allows new solutions to be implemented quickly and flexibly. The cloud billing functions as a background service which ensures that ticket elements are correctly billed to the respective transport associations and providers.

The challenge

  • To offer seamless usage of different public transportation systems
  • Nationwide availability of fare and price information for users of public transportation (product clearing)
  • Clearing of claims, i.e. distribution of payments from users to the various public transportation companies used during a trip

The foundation: Open Telekom Cloud

Hands in front of laptop holding card and smartphone, a cloud hologram appears in front of it.

Cloud billing, like eTicket Clearing, runs on the Open Telekom Cloud. Cloud billing is offered in an SaaS (software as a service) model. This provides VDV eTicket Service with numerous advantages. In addition to offering simple scaling, for example when adding new participants, and ensuring that the application performs well even under an increasing load, this approach provides VDV eTicket Service with transparent, calculable, and user-oriented costs for the service.

“We use the cloud service from T-Systems as a complete service, which saves us from having to use our own resources to provide and operate our clearing service,” reports Nils Zeino-Mahmalat, Managing Director of VDV eTicket Service. “This keeps us flexible and allows us to focus our own efforts on the actual utilization of the system. The constant further development of security, data protection, and services frees us up and allows us to focus on our core business.”

The solution

  • Provision and operation of applications for product and claims clearing as SaaS
  • Cloud billing for VDV eTicket Service is operated scalably in the Open Telekom Cloud
  • Cloud billing runs as a background service that enables automated settlement of claims clearing
  • Rapid implementation through standardized, modular microservice architecture
  • Access to modules via API

We look forward to your project!

We would be happy to provide you with the right experts and to answer your questions about planning, implementation, and maintenance for your digitalization plans. Get in touch!

About VDV eTicket Service

VDV eTicket Service GmbH & Co.KG is the publisher of standards for electronic ticketing in public passenger transport. In this role, it operates the central background systems of (((eTicket Deutschland as a transport authority for digital sales. Around 440 transport companies and associations currently hold a participating interest in (((eTicket Deutschland and use the common standard VDV core application for their electronic fare management (EFM).

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