Contactless EMV (Europay, Mastercard, and Visa) ticketing enables passengers to pay for transit fares with a contactless payment by tapping a contactless-enabled bank card or mobile device (e.g., smartphone or smartwatch) directly at fare validators. This "open-loop" system eliminates the need for dedicated transit cards or pre-purchased tickets, streamlining the boarding process and enhancing user convenience. It supports features like fare capping and real-time fare calculation, ensuring passengers are charged the best available rates. Public transit agencies benefit from reduced operational costs and simplified fare collection infrastructure.

Vayapay's Evolutionary Acceptance Model is a strategic framework that enables transit operators to implement contactless EMV ticketing in stages. It starts with the Known Fare Transaction model and allows for progression to more advanced models like Pay-As-You-Go and Account-Based Ticketing as needed. This approach provides flexibility and scalability in adopting contactless payment solutions.

Known Fare Transactions (KFT) is the preferred go-to-market model when starting with contactless EMV ticketing. With KFT, each contactless journey has a fixed fare and does not require integration with transportation operators' back office or ticketing logic. Our market-proven, ready-to-use setup provides a fast and secure introduction to cEMV ticketing with KFT. ​

With PAYG, all bank card taps are registered and sent to the ticketing logic for evaluation and price calculation. This allows for comprehensive pricing models based on time, zones, distance, and more. With fare capping and regular passenger discounts, customers can be certain they always get the best price. Vayapay’s API makes back office integration a breeze without exposing you to any PCI DSS requirements.

Account-Based Ticketing (ABT) shifts the focus from the transaction to the individual by allowing passengers to always have their journeys linked to their account, regardless of the sales channel or payment method used to buy their ticket. Vayapay’s omni-channel mobility payment platform enables public transport operators to provide this customer-centric ticketing experience, allowing passengers to easily manage their transportation expenses, view their travel history, and receive personalised offers and promotions.

Tokenisation replaces sensitive payment data – like a credit card number – with a unique, secure identifier or reference. Vayapay goes beyond industry standards by creating tokens not only for the primary account number (FPAN) from physical cards, and device account numbers (DPAN or PAN) from digital wallets, but also for the payment account reference (PAR) – and therefore links the physical or digital card and all of its connected devices to the same account.

Vayapay’s dual-layer tokenisation layer allows systems to recognise the same passenger regardless of the sales channel or payment device used. Other solutions may fall short due to a siloed approach to tokenisation. Vayapay enables true account-based ticketing.

Vayapay uses dual-layer tokenisation in its Traveller Profiler to enable recognition of passengers across payment channels — whether they tap in using a phone, card, or smartwatch. We catch the card’s reference and use the Payment Account Reference (PAR) or Funding PAN, giving Public Transit Operators the metadata to create a profile for each passenger. Identifying passengers securely and consistently, even if they access via different form factors. This supports seamless receipt generation and journey history retrieval, even without user accounts. It goes beyond account-based ticketing to give a holistic view of a passenger's transactions across all payment devices, sales channels, operators, and regions.

Thanks to our Traveller Profiler, we can associate tap-in and tap-out actions across different devices (e.g., card vs. phone vs. watch). This ensures accurate journey matching and fare calculation even if users switch devices.

Vayapay is a modular, SaaS-based mobility payment platform designed specifically for public transport operators. Unlike many competitors, we offer a single, integrated solution for contactless EMV (“tap and go”) and online payments, including mobile apps, web portals, and ticket vending machines. A unified payment mobility platform that brings together all transactions across all those sales channels into a single, centralised view. Our technology emphasises speed, flexibility, and local adaptability without being tied to intermediary acquirers, allowing for cost-effective and rapid deployments.

Contactless EMV ticketing interoperability enables passengers to commute travel freely without worrying if their ticket is valid when transferring to a different bus or traveling from city to city.

Ticketing interoperability simplifies travel and removes travel friction. However, it should not impact the business of the public transit operator. Therefore, the operator needs to be sure that the transferring passenger has a valid ticket and that the operator will receive the revenue related to the service provided.

In prior years, many mobility payment solutions were proposed. When a national agency collects ticketing data, such as TransLink in the Netherlands or Entur in Norway, an operator can call on the available data to check travel rights and reconstruct journeys. The standardisation of cardholder references is a crucial requirement for these systems. Operators must exchange passenger information with their neighbouring operators if no central organisation is present. And again, standardisation of the cardholder data is essential.

The international payment schemes are willing to provide standardisation using their payment tokenisation standard, but the cost is relevant. In this model, every tokenisation and de-tokenisation will incur a fee. The European national ticketing schemes and the major public transit operators are proposing a more cost-efficient model defining a standard travel reference. This reference is built on financial standards, such as the PAR and FPAN, and a unique journey identifier, such as the ICC information. This model is very similar to how Vayapay's Traveller Profiler works.

Yes, the Vayapay Traveller Profiler supports interoperability, the reference model standardisation initiative requests. Vayapay is designed to facilitate cross-operator interoperability by leveraging the Payment Account Reference (PAR). Using Traveller Profiler, our system enables Public Transit Operators (PTOs) to identify passengers consistently across different geographic areas and operator networks.

Vayapay facilitates advanced revenue protection by giving public transit operators the tools and data they need to improve their fare collection revenue protection. This protection is driven by Vayapay's financial expertise, which is embedded in the platform. This expertise enables more nuanced flagging of potential fraud, along with Mass Transit Transaction exemption-required deny lists, automated debt recovery, and an inspection API. All these components work together to support more advanced revenue protection than currently offered to public transit operators.

Vayapay Smart Mobility Payment Platform is built to integrate, whether you're upgrading legacy fare systems or deploying new solutions. Our system, designed using today’s software technologies, seamlessly and quickly integrates with any back-office. Integration is API based.

Yes. Localisation is a core strength of our mobility payment platform. We are convinced that supporting domestic and alternative schemes improves the customer experience and reduces the operator's cost. As a regional service provider, we understand the importance of payment behaviour differences and because of our financial background and expertise, we can support you in offering the best payment methods for your travellers.

Absolutely. Vayapay Smart mobility Payment Platform is hardware-agnostic. We have existing API based integrations with payment applications on devices from Ingenico, PAX, Gemini and Castles, and, when needed, we can develop a payment application specifically for the device you want to use.

Vayapay offers one unified backend for all payment touchpoints — from validators and ticket vending machines to apps and websites. This unified omnichannel approach simplifies integration, improves user experience, and ensures all payments are processed under one framework, with full visibility and reconciliation.

Vayapay manages payments from multiple sales channels. cEMV, vending and online/in-app payments are combined, reducing the cost of transactions and streamlining your financial reporting in one consolidated location.

Vayapay manages payments from multiple sales channels. cEMV, vending and online/in-app payments are combined, reducing the cost of transactions and streamlining your financial reporting in one consolidated location.

Yes. We can act as a payment orchestrator and support complex setups, including connecting to multiple PSPs or acquirers. This was recently demonstrated in a large APAC tender, where we proposed novel architectural solutions to support regional complexities.

Vayapay is PCI DSS Level 1 certified and fully GDPR compliant, ensuring the highest standards for secure, privacy-conscious transactions. We use financial-grade tokenisation to avoid storing personal data, replacing sensitive information with secure tokens. Real-time monitoring and built-in revenue protection tools help detect and block suspicious activity across all payment channels.

Vayapay is ideal for:

- Urban and regional transport operators looking to modernise fare systems
- National mobility platforms implementing interoperability

The go-to-market strategy is to work with the best-in-class partners, system integrators and Automatic Fare Collection solution providers. We are convinced we can find the best provider for you.

Yes, the Vayapay Smart mobility Payment Platform is highly customisable. We will tune our platform accordingly based on the sales channels you want to expose, the information you need in your back office, and the data richness of your settlement response from the acquirer.

Yes, Vayapay is built for scale. Its architecture grows alongside your operations, whether you're adding zones, serving more passengers, or integrating new services. The modular and API-driven platform enables expansion without performance bottlenecks or vendor lock-in.

Getting started is simple. Contact us to schedule a consultation and explore how we can tailor Vayapay to your transit system's needs. We provide full support through integration, deployment, and ongoing maintenance, ensuring a smooth transition and long-term success.