Florence, 18 July 2019
As of today, the new cashless payment system for buying tickets on board without any supplementary charge is active on all 355 ATAF buses and 15 Busitalia vehicles used by the Volainbus and The Mall services. The service will become fully operational in August. ATAF is the first company in Italy to activate the service on its entire fleet.
The service is currently available to holders of contactless payment cards using the Mastercard, Maestro, Visa and V PAY networks.
The Florence Cashless Experience project was presented today at the Museo Novecento in Piazza Santa Maria Novella in Florence by the Mayor of Florence Dario Nardella, the CEO of Busitalia and President of ATAF Gestioni, Stefano Rossi and the CEO of ATAF Gestioni, Stefano Bonora.
To make multiple purchases easier, such as those made for families, it will be possible to buy as many as five ATAF&Linea tickets simultaneously. After buying the first ticket, users will have to click on the “Add Passenger” icon and again press the payment card to the card validator and repeat that process for each additional passenger.
Tickets can be bought on board all ATAF buses for 1.50 euros without any supplement, and they are valid for travel for ninety minutes after purchases, including on Linea buses and trams.
When a check takes place, passengers must tell the company employee the last four numbers of the payment card used for the purchase.
Starting today, tickets can also be bought on the Busitalia Volainbus service (the direct Florence-Amerigo Vespucci airport link) and The Mall service (the direct link from Florence to The Mall shopping outlet) using contactless payment cards on the Mastercard, Maestro, Visa and V PAY systems.
Using a payment card for on-board purchase, a maximum of four tickets can be bought, the Volainbus ticket at the standard price of 6 euros; and The Mall ticket at the standard price of 7 euros.
The Florence Cashless Experience, which uses the latest technology, is a user experience pilot project. The aim is to assess how much people like this innovation, which offers a lot of advantages such as being simple to use, the ease of access to services by overcoming problems of finding a ticket, the option of buying more than one ticket at a time and also being able to take advantage of the lowest fare (no supplement is added to the ticket purchase price).
The new payment system that has been adopted by Busitalia and ATAF, which is in line with FS Italiane’s 2019-2023 Industrial Plan, will strengthen the role played by local public transport, making the city and the area more efficient and welcoming for local people and visitors.
“The Florence Cashless Experience is a pilot project for Busitalia that has been created to improve the user experience that people have of urban public transport services, and ones which are strongly orientated to the tourist market, such as Volainbus and The Mall. In Florence we are seeing a concrete example of what until just a few months ago was just an idea: buying a ticket on board by simply tapping the validator, and not having anything to do with paper tickets. It is a project that ensures a better service to our passengers, and access to our best fares”, said Stefano Rossi, the Busitalia CEO and the President of ATAF Gestioni.
Stefano Bonora, CEO of ATAF Gestioni said: “The Florence Cashless Experience is a very innovative project from a technological point of view, that becomes reality on board ATAF vehicles. Starting today, in Florence it will actually be possible to buy an urban public transport ticket on board buses, using a contactless payment card that, when brought close to the green validator, means that an ATAF&Linea ticket, that is valid for ninety minutes, can be bought at the normal price of 1.50 euros”.