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Wellington based Snapper card, which is being introduced onto its Auckland buses mid-year has issued its 100,000th card.
The company’s CEO,Miki Szikszai, says this shows that Snapper has been adopted by the masses in the Wellington market.
In other recent additions, card users can buy tickets for East by West Ferries and from March, can use their Snapper to tag-on and tag-off the ferry and make on-board purchases.
Snapper has developed a prototype self-service kiosk, where customers can receive an instant balance or top-up their Snapper using EFTPOS. Among retail use, cardholders can now use their Snapper to pay for their movie tickets, food and drinks at Reading cinemas in Courtenay Place.
8 Comments
haven’t they had kiosks till now? Hard to see how the card could eventually be used on trains without them.
Is there a topup fee for using the kiosk as opposed to a retailer?
Does this figure include the ones they gave away on the rugby stadium season passes? There’s 8,000 that won’t be used.
London has the Oyster card which is an impressive system. I spend £26 a week and go everywhere I need to go in zone one and two where I live and work. (Central London and Putney) If I want to go to see some friends, in zone 3 or further out, the difference gets deducted off the prepayment amount I also have stored on my card. It’s great for budgeting, and when you want to jump around town it’s easy and with no extra charge (as long as you are in the zones you have bought for that weeks unlimited travel) The zones map. http://www.cyberzone.co.uk/location/zone_map.jpg
and the oyster card system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_card
Wait….what? Only *recently* they have introduced a *prototype* self service kiosk? Are they serious?
“Adopted” by the masses?
Maybe, but they haven’t had much choice have they. More like the masses have been beaten into submission by an arrogent and monopolistic bus operator that has no competion in Wellington other than from rail services on some routes.
I take it the patrons would have added credit to there cards when they jumped on the bus. The same as the metro card in Christchurch. You can see what your balance is when you place your card on the RFID reader on the bus after the driver deducts your zone payment. If you are at the bus exchange in Christchurch you can see the friendly staff to obtain your balance or top up as well.
After using the bus system in Christchurch, it was quite a shock to come to Auckland and have to insert a smart card. Old hat technology.
@Joust
No top up fee on kiosk - you’re right.
@kris_b
We have had a wide range of retail and online top-up options. Kiosks are obviously part of what customers want. We’re past the prototype stage now and will have these deployed widely over the next couple of months.
@Rob
This does include stadium cards - which are still being used fairly consistently.
@Grant
The 100k number dwarfs the number of people who were previously using ten trip cards (around 20k consistently from memory). The continuing take-up, especially as we add more retail spend options, along with our own customer research, is telling us that customers are *choosing* Snapper. They are also telling us they want more places to top up and to check their balance. That’s our focus - making that happen.
Cheers
Miki
CEO
Snapper
@Miki thanks for your answers. Great to see a CEO that is so responsive.