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Fare collection Case studies
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UI-Sinseol Case Study

A little but real change for everyone’s everyday life

The Problem

UI-dong in Seoul is an old bed town located about 10km away from the CBD(Central Business District), which has not yet been redeveloped, so the population and ridership are not high, but the UI-Sinseol line, a light rail line, was opened to improve infrastructure in 2017. As an old residential area with a high proportion of elderly people and a large number of office workers who commute to the city center at a relatively reasonable housing cost, there were two difficult challenges : a large variance in traffic during peak hours and off-peak hours, and consideration for the mobility handicapped by the age. It was also necessary to minimize investment costs given the relatively low ridership.

The Solution

Tmoney has been responsible for transportation in Korea as a transit ticketing system supplier, operator and dominant transportation card issuer and settlement business provider for public transportation and taxis in metropolitan areas and major cities in Korea, with a population of 10 million and 40 million transactions per day from 2004 to the present. It has been the fastest to commercialize the latest trends in payment technology. From inter-operable nationwide transportation prepaid and credit/debit cards in 2004 to SE-based mobile payment in 2010 and HCE-based mobile payment in 2018, and after 5 years of researching and developing, Tmoney released Tagless adopting BIBO concept for the next generation ticketing solution, which is even more innovative and convenient.

Services Delivered

  • Front-End

    • Antenna
    • BLE
    • IR Sensor
    • Flap Control
    • User Position Tracking

  • Back-End

    • Virtual Terminal Management
    • Fare Calculation Logic
    • Payment Method Management
    • Transaction History Management
    • Fare Policy Management

  • Application

    • User Info Management
    • User Device Management
    • Application Management
    • Customer Service
    • Top-up / Payment
    • Ride History
    • Payment History
    • User device’s sensor management

The Benefits

Tmoney has been responsible for transportation in Korea as a transit ticketing system supplier, operator and dominant transportation card issuer and settlement business provider for public transportation and taxis in metropolitan areas and major cities in Korea, with a population of 10 million and 40 million transactions per day from 2004 to the present. It has been the fastest to commercialize the latest trends in payment technology. From inter-operable nationwide transportation prepaid and credit/debit cards in 2004 to SE-based mobile payment in 2010 and HCE-based mobile payment in 2018, and after 5 years of researching and developing, Tmoney released Tagless adopting BIBO concept for the next generation ticketing solution, which is even more innovative and convenient.

Project Statistics

  • 13

    Number of installed gates in UI-Sinseol line

  • 99.9%

    Accuracy rate

  • 10K

    Registered users

  • 20%

    Improved flow speed

The Results

  • The world’s first commercialized non-honor based BIBO transportation ticketing system preventing fare evasion
  • Confirmed Expansion to major cities such as Seoul, Incheon and Daejeon
  • Recognized technology by both users and operators (Patented)
  • Successful Implementation with minimal additional cost on current infrastructure
  • Awarded by UITP and Transport Ticketing Global in the last two consecutive years (2023, 2024)
Awarded by UITP

Lessons Learned

  • Considering that the Seoul Metropolitan Metro, with 647 stations and a total length of 1,338 kilometers, has a unified fare plan, Tagless must support the combined use of NFC payment as well in a single trip chain. Therefore, instead of a separate new app service, Tmoney added a Tagless function to the existing NFC transportation payment app of 2.6 million MAU nationwide to enable both modes of payment.
  • There have been cases of crashes on Bluetooth and device OS below a certain version. So Tmoney set the download requirements in the app market to AOS 8.0 and Bluetooth 5.0 or higher.
  • Due to the rapid increase in congestion during peak hours, there have been cases of failure to enter the ready status or lost transactions. Therefore, Tmoney developed an antenna that allows fine-grained adjustment of BLE signal strength and applied it to adjust the signal strength remotely in real time.
  • There are cases of network or Bluetooth malfunctions and app crashes during Tagless transactions due to conflicts with other apps installed on the user’s smartphone, shaded areas etc., In this case, adding a record to the transaction and forwarding it to the server, Tagless completes the transaction once the user's device is resumed in normal status for the transaction data integrity.
  • Lessons Learned
  • Lessons Learned
  • Lessons Learned