Agreement between SIA and Unicocampania to enable contactless payments on public transport in Naples and at regional level

Trials to begin in the second half of 2020

Thanks to SIA’s digital platform, citizens and tourists will be able to pay for tickets directly at the terminals in the underground, railway, cable car and bus network stations

The world of public transport is preparing to face a new challenge. Thanks to the agreement signed between SIA and the Unicocampania Consortium, trials will start in the second half of 2020 in Naples, Salerno, Avellino and their respective provinces for payment of tickets for local public transport using contactless credit and debit cards.

A real revolution that, when fully implemented, will allow citizens and tourists who travel to the Campania region to pay for their ticket on the underground, railway, cable car and bus network using cards equipped with NFC technology, also virtualized on smartphones and wearable devices, in a simple, fast, secure way.

The innovative service is based on SIA’s technology infrastructure that will connect all the terminals where cards can be swiped to access the public transport network in the Campania region, as well as payment circuits and the regional system for calculating tariffs.

The advanced features supporting the development of Smart Mobility, will allow the management, authorization, accounting and reporting of payment transactions and, at the same time, will allow the user to benefit from the best available tariff based on the number of trips made.

Thanks to SIA’s infrastructure, moreover, it will be possible to use one’s credit card as if it were a season ticket – an innovative way available to users who, after purchasing a season ticket online with a contactless credit card, will be able to use the same card to travel on the entire public transport network of the Campania region.

“The Unicocampania Consortium has been, since its inception, a pioneer in tariff integration, realizing one of the most complex models by number of actors involved and by territorial extension – underlines Gaetano Ratto, Chairman of Unicocampania – That pioneering spirit is still present today and the Consortium is preparing to face a new challenge, that of EMV, in a context that over the years has grown to become even more complex given that, alongside the integrated tariff, today the Consortium also manages a large part of those of the individual companies. We are therefore ready, within the broader framework of the investments that the Campania Region is making in technological development, to face – supported by a prestigious partner like SIA – a new chapter in the long history of Unicocampania’s achievements.”

“Thanks to SIA’s technology, Campania will be the first region in Italy to adopt an integrated digital payment system in the field of public transport. We are particularly proud of this, because it provides further confirmation of our contribution to the path of innovation that our country has taken and along which it is progressively accelerating. Soon Naples and all the other main Campania municipalities will enter the ranks

of the big cities – like Milan, Venice and Rome – which are using our platform to digitize millions of tickets. In this way electronic payments are becoming an increasing part of the daily life of citizens and the standard alternative to cash,” said Eugenio Tornaghi, Director of Marketing & Sales at SIA.