From wallet to smartphone

While the rail and transport industry as a whole has made increasing strides to rethink paper and plastic ticketing systems, National Railcards in the UK had remained behind.

Bringing together the UK’s leading rail companies, Rail Delivery Group (RDG) recognized the urgent need to transform National Railcards. From slow lead and processing times, to the risk of fraud and the frequent challenge of misplacing them, it was time to offer UK customers an altogether smarter, more efficient solution.

RDG turned to us for both their extensive transport sector and mobile-specific expertise. Together, the team began an intensive, two-week discovery phase.

The first priority was to conduct a series of in-depth workshops to clarify the product vision, and map a series of clear user and business outcomes.

One of the most important pain points uncovered was the physical delay between applying for a Railcard and receiving it in the post — which could take up to five working days. This alone meant a loss of nearly 7% of potential Railcard customers.

Following the kick-off workshops, three clear customer outcomes emerged:

• Seamless access. Railcards must be available as quickly and easily as possible.

• Visible savings. Whatever the route, customers should have access to all eligible discounts.

• Redeemable on demand. Customers should be able to redeem a Railcard on their devices at any time.

Extensive user research was conducted in stations across London, testing prototype solutions directly with customers. This real-world research was invaluable, as it allowed the team to uncover the varying pain points and experiences of all Railcard users, from students to the elderly.

Wireframes and early-stage designs were then iterated rapidly, informed by these fast, direct feedback loops.

The team also jumped aboard trains to test solutions with our other key user group, Revenue Protection Inspectors. We ran sessions across train operating companies. This ensured multiple digital Railcards could be easily checked on mobile in the short space of time that ticket inspections occur, and it ensured any usability issues could be surfaced and addressed early.

Preventing fraudulent misuse has been an essential requirement for both RDG and train operating companies from the outset. The app has many security features built into it, with one particularly innovative example being the digital hologram visible on all cards.

The hologram isn’t a static visual asset. Instead, it is a fully coded feature that uses a phone’s in-built sensors to generate non-linear movement visible as the hologram’s sheen. This makes it difficult to predict and replicate.

For security, it’s critical that a Railcard can be validated prior to use. Background updates are a straightforward way to ensure that any Railcard is valid, with any invalid card passing into a locked state upon opening. Background updates also ensure, when using a valid Railcard, that customers don’t suffer the anxiety of waiting for it to load during a ticket inspection.

Even at a low level, however, background updates impact a user’s battery and data — which isn’t a great experience if you’re travelling.

Our engineers, therefore, made use of certain native aspects of iOS and Android to implement two different types of background update: friendly and mandatory.

Taken together, this inexpensive enhancement means not only is Railcard security robustly met, but battery and data are impacted far less, resulting in an improved user experience.

In just over three months, Valtech and RDG successfully transitioned National Railcards from a physical to a digital format.

The customer response has been remarkable. More than 2 million digital Railcards have been sold in the first two years, and the app is currently rated at 4.7 stars on the App Store and Play Store combined.

The app provides an acutely flexible foundation for the inclusion of new Railcards. This allows RDG to release and test new propositions at a greatly accelerated pace.