Welcome to Universal Ticket Agent

Discover UniTiAg, a SaaS for Transits, Open-Loop Ticketing System Vendors, and Marketplaces

This site introduces UniTiAg, an innovative open-loop ticketing solution and SaaS platform. This site is designed for executives, business development managers, product managers, business analysts, software developers and testers from transit operators or agencies (TAs), Two-Sided Marketplaces (TSMPs), and ticketing system vendors providing software, hardware, and services to TAs. The site highlights the key benefits of UniTiAg and provides implementation guidance for these stakeholders.

In summary, UniTiAg does not sell transit rides and fares directly. Instead, it facilitates fare payments through patrons’ Open-to-Ride Balances (OTRBs), enabling Transit Agencies to sell rides to their patrons via a common Two-Sided Marketplace infrastructure.

Benefits for Two-Sided Marketplaces

Online TSMPs can leverage UniTiAg’s open-loop ticketing SaaS to integrate Transit Agencies as online merchants, or sellers, streamlining the sale of transportation services.

TSMPs have two customer categories:

  • Merchants (Transit Agencies selling rides)
  • Shoppers (Patrons using transit services via open-loop cards)

Examples of two-sided marketplaces of this kind are Amazon, PayPal, Lyft, Uber, Walmart (online), Target (online), etc.

UniTiAg presents a revenue opportunity for TSMPs by lowering fare collection costs. The revenue generated by TSMPs using UniTiAg is based on the cost of fare collection. Statista estimates worldwide public transit annual fare revenue at $280 billion. The cost of fare collection across all ticketing methods starts at 7% of fare revenue, not counting capital expenditures. It can often be significantly higher when open-loop fare collection methods are involved.

UniTiAg reduces these costs. This means that UniTiAg has the potential to generate additional revenue to the participating TSMPs providing online merchant services to TAs.

Explore our TSMP mockup, AmuzeBuy to see how your TSMP can expand into transit services.

Benefits for Ticketing System Vendors

UniTiAg offers success for existing open-loop ABT and AFC systems vendors. It enables them to provide more efficient solutions for TAs. TAs can continue using their own validation devices, fare policies, and discounts while benefiting from UniTiAg’s integration. This can lead to more successful projects and increased sales for vendors.

Explore our TSMP mockup, AmuzeBuy, our validator mockup, and try our simple APIs, to discover how you can offer even better services to your TA-customers.

Benefits for Transit Agencies

Many Transit Agencies (TAs) are piloting open-loop ABT or AFC systems to reduce cash management costs and simplify access to services. However, these projects often face low adoption rates and high implementation costs. Implementing traditional open-loop systems can be costly, especially for mid-size and smaller TAs.

UniTiAg provides a cost-effective solution for TAs and their ticketing system vendors, shifting from card-present to e-commerce transactions, reducing PCI DSS and payment schemes compliance burdens, and streamlining processes. This allows TAs to maintain their fare policies while lowering the complexity and expense of open-loop systems.

Open-To-Ride Balance

UniTiAg’s core concept is the Open-to-Ride Balance (OTRB), a balance linked to a contactless card or token, shared among participating Transit Agencies (TAs). UniTiAg synchronizes OTRB updates in near real-time, ensuring all TAs reflect changes when funds are used.

The OTRB can be pre-authorized, prepaid, postpaid, or a combination, based on creditworthiness, card type, and TSMP’s risk management policies. Once an OTRB is created, customers can tap their contactless card at any participating TA for seamless access to transit services.

With UniTiAg, Transit Agencies are no longer traditional brick-and-mortar merchants. The card tap is no longer a card-present payment transaction but rather a method of registration of a service paid through the TSMP.

AmuzeBuy and Sandbox Environment

AmuzeBuy is a TSMP mockup showcasing the user experience that any TSMP can provide by implementing the UniTiAg TSMP API. Create a shopper/rider account, set up payment methods, manage OTRBs, and simulate card taps with our validator mockup.

AmuzeBuy runs on the UniTiAg Sandbox environment.

  • Open-Loop Ticketing software developers: contact us for access to the UniTiAg Sandbox to integrate your ticketing system using our  TA and TANB APIs.
  • TSMP developers: contact us for access to our fare validator and TA simulator to test your integration with UniTiAg using our TSMP API.

Next to watch and read

UniTiAg architecture

UniTiAg vs classic open loop: pros and cons

Watch videos on our YouTube channel Universal Ticketing Agent