Monday, 15 August 2011 23:36
By Songa wa Songa
The Citizen Correspondent
Dar es Salaam. A Dar es Salaam-based marine transporter, Azam Marine and Coastal Fast Ferries limited, has embarked on mobile ticketing in a bid to make the process more convenient to customers.
The company believes moving from traditional paper ticketing, will enable it to smoothly avoid unscrupulous traders who used to buy and hoard tickets that they later resell to desperate travelers at inflated prices.
We used to receive a lot of complaints on passengers paying these tricksters twice as much as the normal fare. Moving to mobile ticketing will help our customers to pay just what they are required to, the companys general manager, Mr Hussein Said told The Citizen recently.
According to him, the company commissioned a Finnish company CARUS in 2009 to develop the project software for Euros 200,000 (about Sh400million) and the service was on trial for the past two months.
So far so good, the service has shown a positive result and if all goes well, we shall officially launch the programme early next month, he said.He said the idea of mobile banking, the worlds newest technology in ticket sales, came after the company faced some challenges with its former electronic-ticketing project.
We tried electronic ticketing but as you know, ours is not a credit card economy with mobile money transfer at a boom in the country, we decided to use the technology, he said.
Mobile ticketing technology allows a passenger to call to a free number of the partner mobile phone operator, which is linked to the companys server for reservation reference number. The client then selects the date and time of travel, class and price from the handset menu then pays through mobile money transfer service.
According to Mr Said, the ongoing trial phase involves Vodacom and Zantel but the company will sign up other operators as the programme grows.In addition, the programme will include installation of e-gate that will only allow passage to passengers with the right ticket of the specific time and date.
Source: Firm starts mobile ticketing
By Songa wa Songa
The Citizen Correspondent
Dar es Salaam. A Dar es Salaam-based marine transporter, Azam Marine and Coastal Fast Ferries limited, has embarked on mobile ticketing in a bid to make the process more convenient to customers.
The company believes moving from traditional paper ticketing, will enable it to smoothly avoid unscrupulous traders who used to buy and hoard tickets that they later resell to desperate travelers at inflated prices.
We used to receive a lot of complaints on passengers paying these tricksters twice as much as the normal fare. Moving to mobile ticketing will help our customers to pay just what they are required to, the companys general manager, Mr Hussein Said told The Citizen recently.
According to him, the company commissioned a Finnish company CARUS in 2009 to develop the project software for Euros 200,000 (about Sh400million) and the service was on trial for the past two months.
So far so good, the service has shown a positive result and if all goes well, we shall officially launch the programme early next month, he said.He said the idea of mobile banking, the worlds newest technology in ticket sales, came after the company faced some challenges with its former electronic-ticketing project.
We tried electronic ticketing but as you know, ours is not a credit card economy with mobile money transfer at a boom in the country, we decided to use the technology, he said.
Mobile ticketing technology allows a passenger to call to a free number of the partner mobile phone operator, which is linked to the companys server for reservation reference number. The client then selects the date and time of travel, class and price from the handset menu then pays through mobile money transfer service.
According to Mr Said, the ongoing trial phase involves Vodacom and Zantel but the company will sign up other operators as the programme grows.In addition, the programme will include installation of e-gate that will only allow passage to passengers with the right ticket of the specific time and date.
Source: Firm starts mobile ticketing
