How Modern Fare Technology Improves the Rider Experience with Masabi’s Jeff Nullmeyer, Sr. Business Development Manager

Stop Requested. Welcome to Stop Requested, the podcast where we discuss everything transit. I’m your co-host, Levi McCollum, Director of Operations at ETA Transit. And I’m your co-host, Christian Londono,

Senior Customer Success Manager at ETA Transit. Welcome back to Stop Requested, coming to you from the expo floor at the Transport Ticketing North America 2025. How are you doing this morning, Levi? I’m doing very well.

This is gonna be a great conversation that we have here. Oh, yeah. Well, joining me today, joining us today is, uh, Mr. Jeff Nullmeyer,

Senior Business Development Manager at Masabi, a company helping transit agencies upgrade how riders pay for their trips, and- and also a great partner, uh, for us at ETA Transit.

Uh, Jeff, welcome to the show, first things first. How’s the conference going for you so far? Uh, it’s going very well. Thank you for asking. Uh, so Jeff, y- you know, you and I just met, but, um, maybe some of our listeners already know you. But for those that don’t, uh, could you give us a background into yourself, how you got to be in your position at Masabi and in public transportation? Sure. Well, I started actually over at DelaRoc, which is now UMO, so that was where I got my start in the transit industry, was with UMO for about two and a half years, and then they ended up selling to Cubic.

Um, right before they sold, we actually grew the company from just one agency to over 10, uh, and then they sold for a nice amount to Cubic. And about that time, I- I was recruited and went over to Masabi.

Um, been in the transit industry now for about nine years. Excellent. And so you’re at Masabi now. Uh, you know, I think a lot of our listeners have heard of Masabi at this point. It- it seems to be pretty ubiquitous with- within the transit space. But for those that aren’t, uh, can you give us some background into Masabi? What does Masabi do? How does it help transit agencies? Absolutely. Well, I consider Masabi more than anything else to be a ticketing company. Um, what we are is the platform, uh, behind that ticketing as far as for passengers. And so we enable passengers to get onto a bus, a train, a ferry, and hopefully without too many hurdles. Um, and the way that we remove hurdles is by offering discount entitlements and discounts associated with that and the ability just to tap and pay, uh, as they go up to a validator. Or if there aren’t validators, for example, on a bus, they can just show a mobile ticket, visual validation.

Um, but that’s really what Masabi does is we know what we do. Uh, I don’t know if you’ve been to California and gone to In-N-Out, but they do burgers well and- and fries and shakes, and Masabi is a ticketing company. Um, and so basically, what we want to do as a ticketing company is we want to do what we do well and then integrate with other companies. And that’s- and we’ll talk more about that, I’m sure. Yeah, I love that. And for the transit nerds like Christian and me, you know, who would like to use a- a physical pass and have that for our collection, is that something that Masabi facilitates as well? You can still use a physical pass? Oh, yeah. See, that’s the great thing I think in this day and age is passengers want to ride with the thing they want to ride with, and it’s really not our job to dictate what they ride with. And

I think agencies are starting to get really, um… They’re- they’re putting a priority now on customer experience and rider experience, and one of the ways you really do help the rider have a good experience is to allow them to board using the fare media of their choice.

And so that could be, like you said, an NFC card, um, just tap and pay using NFC card. Um, and then of course, mobile. A lot of people want to use a mobile device, uh, especially if you’re, for example, partnering with a college, pushing… You know, we- we help agencies push tickets out in bulk to colleges and universities, employers. And when you get into a college, you’ll have 99% of the riders using a mobile device.

But then other people, especially certain, you know, certain rider types, like for example, if a tourist walks into town, they don’t want to download an app, and they don’t necessarily want to go find a smart card. And so for that rider, sometimes it’s very easy just to use a contactless credit card, for example. I see.

And so you mentioned transit agencies, you mentioned universities. Are there any other customers that you- you work with or even specifically into the transit space? Can you give us some examples of some of the customers you have? Yeah.

Well, first of all, we don’t really work necessarily directly with the college or the university or the employer. We work with transit agencies. Um, some of them are private, most of them are public. And then what we do though is we allow them to then… We give them the tools to partner with colleges, universities, employers, things like that. We have several different portals.

Uh, we’re a SaaS, uh, solution. So basically, uh, you can compare us to like salesforce.com or something like that. We’re that platform behind the ticketing. Um, not only the back office as far as all the data and analytics, but also in addition to that, several different portals that we have.

Uh, one, for example is a rider portal they can go on, see their account history. But then we also have what we call a partner portal, and that would be something the college could actually tap into and push out tickets in bulk to their students, employees, things like that.

But as far as customers, um, Masabi has, uh, definitely done well in the North American market. That’s my focus is I do the eastern portion of North America.

Um, but some recognizable names like for example, MTA in New York, we do all the ticketing there behind TrainTime, the app.

Uh, we also RTC in Las Vegas, uh, we just deployed contactless EMV for RTC. Um, we also do their mobile ticketing and other things there as well.

Um, and then Denver is another one that we do. Um, we do account-based ticketing for Denver. It’s multimodal, uh, with the train and everything.

Um, but we’ve done some interesting things for them as well. But that’s just a few of our customers out there. And we have about 140 agencies worldwide on the platform today. Including our mutual customer, Tarta, right? That’s right. Yep, yep. Beautiful. That’s right.

And also, uh, Greenville, uh, it’s getting- Okay. Greenville, that’s right. It’s just getting ready to deploy not too long from now. Yes. A- and I guess this, this is an obvious, uh, question that I wanna follow up with but, you know, you help agencies transition from all fare technology systems.

Some have a very archaic form of fare technology. Right. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, what should they upgrade? W- what’s, what’s wrong with the old way of collecting fares? Well, it’s a great question and, and, you know, agencies are all over the place as far as what they’re doing. Some are using very outdated systems, some as old as 50 years old that they’re still using.

Um, so I think, uh, it’s, it’s not so much what’s wrong with those systems. For the time when they came out, they were actually pretty good, like a card-based solution, for example, where everything was written on the card.

Uh, but now we’ve kind of moved beyond that. You know, we’re in a day and age, for example, that, that swipe cards or magnetic swipe cards, things like that, the problem with that, um, and people still use them, is there’s moving parts and so those machines break down, uh, causes a lot of headaches in the agencies and what happens a lot of times is those machines break and when passengers walk up with that swipe card, they’ll just wave them on, uh, so then you’re losing fare revenue and things like that. So what’s better, I think, in this day and age is to use some of the newer technologies.

Uh, Masabi is not… You know, we’re… When… We’re… I’m gonna use a term, we’re hardware agnostic. Uh, meaning that we… you know, as far as the hardware is out, that is out there, we can supply the hardware, but we can also integrate with third-party hardware as well, so validators, TV, ticket vending machines, things like that.

Um, but as far as those old systems, I think one of the problems with those systems too is they were very hardware heavy as far as it was a hardware solution and so automatically, like buying a car, when you buy that hardware, it starts dating from day one.

Um, Masabi is a SaaS solution. We’re always updating the platform. We don’t cause like a vendor lock-in, uh, meaning that you can choose the, the different companies you work with and they’ll integrate with us. CAD/AVL company, for example, of course, ETA, um, also the f- the hardware you use as far as, again, ticket vending machines, you know, your, your different, validators. Um, so we bring a lot of flexibility uh, and I think that’s been one of the keys for Masabi. When you talk about the fare collection industry, one of the words very few vendors use is flexibility, um, but that’s something we have and something I love about Masabi. Yeah. I l- I like how you describe the newer technology has less moving parts and less opportunities for breakdowns and potentially fareboxes not working correctly and, from my experience working in a transit agency, I know you know, uh, that, uh, many agencies with a antiquated, uh, fare technology, mostly that magnetic stripe, uh, they experience daily a, what they call, uh, farebox road calls, uh, where the driver is calling in and, you know, letting communications know that the, uh, farebox is, is not working. A lot of times it’s, it’s jammed so if you… a lot of people use bills then that causes that and also if they have to put magnetic stripe, those that go inside the machine and they get spit out again.

All those parts, like you said, the physical things, it creates, uh, opportunities for, for road calls and for equipment failure. So when we talk about the newer thing, it has to do with, uh, mobile ticketing, contactless payment that allows, you know, less moving parts. Mm-hmm. Uh, so how does that help, uh, riders and, and could you kind of explain a little bit, you know, those two concepts, mobile ticketing and contactless payment? Sure. Well, it kind of goes back to what we were just talking about, giving riders, uh, different choices, you know.

but as far as what’s, what that has really brought about is Um, offering contactless payment now to the riders and also mobile ticketing. It just gives them more choices when they’re riding. Um, I think one of the nice things for Masabi is, uh, you know, not everybody’s gonna want to use a credit card but certain, certain rider types are gonna want to use it, like a tourist coming into town, for example. The, the contactless credit card enables that tourist or commuter to walk into town, not have to download the app and not have to go find a smart card or go to a ticket vending machine or wait in a line somewhere. So it, it has really enabled the passenger just to go right up to the, to the bus or, or, or to the ferry or to the train, tap and ride. And that’s, that’s the thing we were just talking about, moving parts. Well, we enable tap and ride so you’re just gonna go up to a validator and you’re gonna obviously tap or it’s a scan for mobile ticketing using a dynamic barcode, um, but I think it’s just faster, more convenient.

Um, one other thing that we do I think that’s nice, and I know we’re gonna talk about this, but regardless of the fare media they’re using, whether it’s m- mobile ticketing, uh, contactless EMV or o- you know, contactless credit cards, open payment, called different, many different things, uh, or NFC smart cards, the DES fire cards, we’ll support discount fare entitlement, uh, fare types or entitlements.

And so if you’re like a senior passenger, for example, you can get a discount when you, you know, tap and ride. Uh, we also do ticketless travel. One of the barriers in travel is the fact that a lot of people get stressed out, “What ticket do

I need for this?” Um, so they can just add stored value to their account if they’re using mobile ticketing or an NFC smart card and they just tap and ride, get on board. Uh, as they continue to tap, it’ll move them towards discounts if they’re, you know, want us to actually support fare capping so there’s a lot of advantages that come with this new technology as well for the rider and for the agency.

I would say one last thing though, for mobile ticketing and contactless payment is you’re gonna start reducing the cash on board. Now a lot of agencies are not necessarily gonna want to get c- rid of cash on board but again when you’re talking about the agency and the things they have to do, counting cash is a big, a big thing, you know, and, and, uh, so when we reduce that cash down to a manageable amount, it really lightens that burden for an agency. So that’s another positive, I think, to deploying those.

And I think Christian and I know that pretty well, working on the agency side, how the administrative resources that go into a fare collection, right? It’s the person that’s, you know, getting that cash off board. Oh, yeah.

Uh, uh, you know, then that goes into a vault, and then, uh, all the cash has to be counted, and you have to have someone watching that person that’s counting. Uh, it’s a whole ordeal, but I don’t think many people really spend the time to think how, um, intricate it, it can be. So, I, I certainly understand your point there.

Uh, regarding, you know, the, uh, the special transit card, you know, like the, the one that Tarta has, or, uh, you know, I’m sure some of your other customers, or just using a, you know, a phone, or even perhaps a bank card, are you seeing any, any trends that agencies are moving towards, you know, one direction versus another? what, what do you think is the, the future there? Yeah, it’s interesting. Um, you know, definitely there are certain

Uh, agencies that are now starting to think about moving away from smart cards, for example, NFC smart cards. Um, but it really, one… A- an agency told me a long time ago, “If you’ve seen one transit agency, you’ve seen one transit agency.” And the meaning behind that, of course, is they’re all very different.

Uh, they all have their own agenda and their own scope of work when you get started working with them. Uh, so I think, you know, I think that, um, there is kind of this move, because

NFC smart cards, I don’t know if you know this, but they’ve gone from being maybe a dollar a piece. Now, even in bulk, uh, they’re probably about $3 a piece. Um, so the price of those has really gone up, and then you have a lot of issues around them, uh, you know, as far as distribution of those smart cards, and also, um, just the management of them, uh, as far as in the backend.

So there’s a lot going on with that. But with that said, some of the big systems that are coming out right now, and Masabi just won one, uh, they’re still using that smart card.

Um, and one of the reasons I think they are still using it in the bigger systems, and, and smaller systems too, is that they’re still getting a lot of pr- as far as the percentage of people using, you still get a lot of riders that want to use smart cards. But you are gonna see some agencies not deploy them, and I think that is one difference.

Yeah. Uh, you know, one, one thing I, I want to add, uh, specifically with the smart cards. Um, when I was, uh, still working at ******* we deployed, you know, all kinds of fare technology, including a smart card, and, of course, the mobile app, and, um, you know, all these other things.

but most of people were just using their phone app. They’re generating their pass on the phone and scanning. Um, Less moving parts again for them, more convenient. That’s, what’s one thing that people cannot live without today, and you wouldn’t even like turn back around is, is your phone. Is- you cannot be away from the phone.

right off the bat, uh, they get it right there. And to your point of distribution, even with a traditional, So, uh, uh, fare payment technology, the, the magnetic, uh, stripes is that you have, uh, different points of sales. Typically, you know, throughout your city and, and your community so it’s convenient for people to go and get those passes, but then you have to, you know, go and collect from them. And sometimes it’s cash and sometimes it’s, you know, redistributing the cards versus giving people the convenience of just doing it on your ph- on their phone.

So, uh, uh, 100% agree with that. Now, the question that I have for you- Yeah. … as it relates to these different ways to pay um, your fare and as a rider for, is, is the possible fare capping, you know, and the capability of, of being fare capped.

Uh, so first, could you start giving us and our listeners a big, uh, I mean, a brief definition of what a fare capping is and how does it saves the riders? Absolutely. You know, before I even do that, I just want to say, one of the things that is exciting, I think, with Masabi, and there are other companies, but I think Masabi particularly does a great job with this, and that is, I think there’s more of a emphasis on helping those riders that are unbanked or cash-prefering riders, and fare capping is definitely one of those ways that we do that. Um, some people, uh, that are using transit on a regular basis are gonna find it difficult, uh, to purchase their monthly pass, for example, at the beginning of the month.

Um, so what you’ll find instead is that they’ll, you know, they’re, they’re relying on, relying on, uh, transit on a daily basis, many of, many of these riders, and so they’ll be tapping and riding. Um, so as they tap and ride, the concept behind fare capping is, is that they can start to earn those passes. Um, you know, a lot of agencies will actually offer both.

So some people can purchase that monthly pass at the beginning of the month and they can just use it, but the passenger that is tapping and riding and maybe can’t pr- can’t actually afford that, they can load their account with stored value, and then as they tap, they’ll earn a, perhaps a day pass, where, you know, after a couple of rides, let’s say the ride is $2.00.

Um, they tap twice and maybe the day pass is four doll- or let’s say $3.00. On that second tap, they’ll only be charged $1.00, and they’ll seamlessly m- be moved over to the day pass.

Now, in the subsequent days after that, they can continue to, to tap and ride and earn a weekly pass, a monthly pass, things like that. Um, so it really is a big, a big thing for them, because they can still use these passes and they’re, they have access to them even though maybe they can’t afford them at the beginning of the month. Or it’s just more convenient for them to ride this way. And so you’re just giving that rider that flexibility and option. Yeah, and I think that’s really critical, uh, you know, for equitable purposes, right? The- y- in other, in other words, you’re essentially penalizing the people who may not be able to afford it if, if you’re not doing fare capping. That’s right. So

I, I, I love that approach that, uh, you know, Masabi has there in giving that options to the transit Yeah. One other thing I would add, too, is there are quite a few agencies that have gone out and agency. they say, “Well, hey. We’re doing fare capping,” and they’re all excited about it, but then they just fare cap one piece of fare media.

Um, so for example, you’ll see fare capping attached to mobile ticketing or something like that. Masabi feels like that really is missing a, a big segment of the population of riders. So one of the things I love is the fact that we fare cap regardless of the, of the front end token to travel or that fare media that you’re using.

Uh, so you could be using contactless credit card, virtual wallet, um, you’re gonna still get the fare capping. You could be using your NFC smart card or your mobile device as far as your, your, your mobile ticketing.

Um, and that also is, of course, those riders are also gonna be moved through fare capping. Uh, one other quick thing. Uh, I think this is kind of exciting. Masabi has what we call a family account, and you have one credit card attached to many different tokens. And so the way we manage that is basically allowing all those different riders to be attached. Could be a family, could be a corporate account, uh, attach that one credit card or that one payment source.

All of them are actually working towards their own individual fare capping. Wow. I, uh, did not know that. Th- that’s really interesting and I, I think pretty novel, uh, compared to, you know, maybe some of the other options on the market. I think so. I don’t see it too often. I,

I don’t know of another one. I’m sure there probably is, but I don’t know of it. Right. Uh, yeah, I mean, typically, and correct me if I’m wrong here, but typically it’s, you know, one person and they have their account and then they have that particular payment option associated with that account, right? Yeah, that’s the- It doesn’t extend beyond just that individual. Right.

That’s the norm. And one of the great things about our platform is the fa- is the fact that it’s very configurable. And so you have some agencies, uh, you know, you get certain private agencies that may not want to do fare capping. We can configure it that way. But public agencies usually do, but they want, might wanna do it in specific ways. For example, maybe you go straight from a day pass to a monthly pass, but they don’t wanna do a weekly pass for whatever reason. We can configure the platform to meet their needs. I love that.

Uh, so, you know, you, you’ve r- really given us a good primer here on what Masabi does and, you know, all the interesting, uh, different options that you provide to the transit agency.

Uh, can you give an example of, uh, one of your implementations at a particular location? Like, uh, what was special about it, you know, what, what’s the highlight for you? Yeah. I’m gonna tell you about two quick ones. Okay. Okay? I think one is really interesting.

Um, not too, too long ago, we deployed, uh, LAWA, Los Angeles Area World Airports, out in Los Angeles. It’s a commuter service that actually takes passengers from different places in LA and around that area to LAX.

We, uh, originally started with just mobile ticketing, um, and so 100% of their fare revenue was through the mobile ticketing.

Um, but then they deployed contactless credit cards, and because it is a commuter route and kind of what we’re talking about, certain types of riders really like using their credit card, they’ve actually shot up to 55% using the credit card now.

Um, so that’s an example of just a service not accepting cash on board that is actually… And they do a, you know… LAWA is actually a pretty large agency in its own right. Um, so 100% coming through mobile and actually contactless credit cards.

Another one that’s kinda interesting is Madison, uh, that’s out in Wisconsin. Now Madison actually is, is just now deploying, uh, I think it’s actually deployed completely, um, contactless EMV, uh, mobile ticketing, uh, you know, smart cards, so the entire thing, but it’s all live. And so as- you know, that’s an exciting one that is just going live right now.

And then, uh, you know, one other… And I know I’m giving you a quick shotgun, but we… One interesting project is LANTA, Lehigh Northampton Transportation Authority. Um, that is actually deploying this month and LANTA will be cash free. Uh, and so I don’t think they’re starting cash free, but they’re gonna move towards that concept using those same things.

Um, we have one out in Dayton, Ohio. Um, and Dayton, Ohio actually is cash free and the way that they’ve done this is by enabling passengers to go to, uh, what we call the income locations, CVS, Dollar General, places like that, to top up your account with stored value and then tap and ride using mobile device or your NFC smart card.

But now in the case of Madison or Atlanta, uh, you know, they’re gonna do those same types of things, um, u- also deploy, uh, ticket vending machines, uh, for the cash riders. So kind of interesting, you know, a lot of agencies want to decrease cash, but there’s a couple that actually reduced it down to where they’re not accepting cash on board. Oh,

I, I wasn’t aware of those examples. That’s, that’s really good and I’m, I’m glad you shared those with us. Oh, so what are you hearing from the riders specifically when, whenever Masabi, uh, comes into one of these new agencies? Well, I, I think, you know, and w- a lot of the way we hear back is we talk to our agencies and we find out through them what the riders are saying.

I think that when you offer riders discounts, you know, discount entitlements, uh, when you offer them fare capping like we were mentioning, um, you know, if they understand, and that it doesn’t take long, it’s just good advertising and promotion and things like that will help them to understand what’s being presented or what they have available to them, I do think they really appreciate that, and also that ability to use whatever is in their pocket, and I think that’s just really conveni-… I know I like that. Like, if I go off to a city, um, Masabi is located in London, and when I go to London now I know that when I go in The Tube, I don’t have to worry about getting, uh, you know, some fare media somewhere, I can just tap my credit card.

So I think that w- you know, once passengers realize they can use the fare media of their choice, it makes it just a, um, a lot more pleasant experience.

Um, one last example. Now this is kind of an older example, but it used to be that in… with LA Metrolink, that riders had to go after they completed their ride with LA Metrolink and they had to go to a TVM and wait in long lines in order to get onto LA Metro.

Um, so one of the things Masabi, and this is just a good example of how we alleviate those lines and things, Masabi actually add an integration into the Cubic gates, enabling the passengers to receive a free transfer and just go right through the gate without having to worry and wait in lines. And so that’s just kind of the type of thing we do to make a l- a rider’s life, you know, just a little easier. Well, that… I, I can see from the rider’s perspective where that would be, that would reduce my anxiety about buying the ticket, especially if I’m traveling to a new place, then, you know,

I can just use what’s in my pocket, I pay, and it, it puts the… More of the focus on the service- That’s right. … r- rather than on, like, “How do I pay for this thing?” Well, and agencies are finding out through questionnaires and things like that, one of the things that keeps people from riding is anxiety and just, you know, concerned about the different hurdles that are out there. And so the more they can alleviate anxiety, the more they can make it simple, like for example, like we were talking about ticketless travel, where they just tap and ride and the ticket is already figured out for them, they don’t have to worry about, “Which ticket do I need to buy here?”

Um, you know, as they tap, they can move along in fare capping, so really, they just, they just have to get on board and tap. What have you heard from the transit agency specifically about any, any surprises? Like, w- what really excites them and maybe they weren’t aware of it, then Masabi comes in and they’re like, “Wow, this is a game changer for us.” I think one of the big things about Masabi, and I think, you know, we, we definitely tell people this all along the way, but when they actually see it-… I think it really is a game changer and that is the fact that if you start a contract with Masabi, and let’s just say it’s a five-year contract, by the time you reach the end of that contract, a lot of agencies will renew.

Um, so five years go by, the platform has really changed substantially o- over the course of that time. And when I mean substantially, I mean updates are, are pretty continuous. Uh, you know, lots of new things. For example, you know, Las Vegas, when they joined Masabi, uh, they did mobile ticketing, uh, they did a few other interesting things, but along the, this time as far as over the course of the contract, uh, we’ve done a lot of additional things and they’ve taken advantage of those, like contactless EMV and integrating into third-party apps, selling tickets through

Transit app and Uber and, you know. So there’s a lot of interesting things that Masabi has done that, that a lot of our agencies that, that have been with us any period of time have been able to take advantage of. That’s the beauty of software. That’s right. Instead of being… And that’s what we were talking about, you really reliant on hardware, we ha- And, you know, we obviously do work with hardware, but we try to work know, instead of being with as minimally, minimally as possible. Um, but now there’s a platform, and of course that platform, we’re spending virtually all of our time upgrading the platform and doing… That’s really what we do 24/7. Yeah. Th- And that’s just, uh, performance improvement. It’s just helping agencies streamline those processes, not just for the agency itself to be more operationally efficient, but just to improve the riders’ experience as well.

So, um, I wanna ask you, what’s one big mistakes agencies make when think about, uh, fare systems? Yeah. One of the things, uh, and I think this is a mistake in this day and age, first of all, um, we talked about the continual updates that r- that agencies make, but another big thing is, is, uh, not locking yourself into one vendor.

Um, Masabi is an open architecture. Um, when I say open architecture, I mean that we’ll integrate with third parties, uh, whether it be third-party TVMs, third-party apps, um, third-party, uh, you know, validators, things like that. So we wanna work with all kinds of different, uh, vendors out there, and we do, and we’re not actually walling off anyone. Um, that’s our desire. So I think a lot of agencies, first of all, they’ll tie themselves into one vendor and then not be able to work with the other vendors that they want to work with.

And, and also in addition to that, I think a big, big area is RFPs. Um, agencies come out with RFPs and a lot of them have this huge desire to update their technology and to, you know, start using, like, for example, a SaaS solution, but then they write their RFP and it really is an RFP that is written for a legacy system.

And so I think another, another issue is, um, basically taking out some of the requirements, make it a little more, um, friendly, uh, for a SaaS solution because we’re not exactly the same and there are some, some things that, you know, that can keep us from bidding on a project, like ownership of the IP. You know, as far as when you wor- work with Masabi, the platform, you don’t own the platform. Just like if you use Microsoft, uh,

Microsoft Excel and you have a subscription, um, obviously you don’t own that copy of Microsoft Excel. Those days have kind of gone, come and gone. And so when you put things like that into the RFP and if you’re not willing to adjust the RFP language, that can keep us from bidding. And so I think agencies need to understand basically the differences, and we’ll help them do that. If they talk to us, we’ll certainly, c- certainly tell them, “Hey, this is, you know, this is a good way to write your RFP and it’s not completely written just for Masabi. It would be an RFP that many can respond to, um, but this will allow us to bid.” And I think that is something hopefully that they’ll get past. And, and you have those resources to provide agencies if they wanted to look for some language that is open that would allow them also to look for the latest and greatest, right? Like, be- because that’s, that’s something that you said is some of these RFPs that maybe somebody’s copying and pasting and putting out there is for outdated technology.

Uh, and also there’s different types of technology that is offered for, you know, in terms of fare technology that agencies can choose and pick from in, in also identifying and realizing which one is, is the one for us, like what’s the next step for us? There’s funding constraint, there’s depending on their constituency, you know, their willingness to get rid of cash or not.

So, I think that that’s very important for agencies to speak with, you know, consultants such as yourself in this industry to understand what is that that we need.

so, uh, what’s Um, one cool thing, you know, here at the conference, uh, that you’ve seen in terms of technology trends, the technology space that translate should be keeping an eye on? Sure. And, and to answer your question real quickly, we certainly do have those materials available if they want as far as the language for RFPs and things like that, um, for their proposal or for their RFPs.

Um, but in regards to cool technology, I guess one that stands out, and I’m not, you know, I’m not saying that Masabi is gonna use this or anything, but there is a, uh, smart card vendor here that actually as you tap, it actually gives you a number on the front end of that smart card telling you, for example, you have 61 trips left or you have, uh, $55 on your card. I, I thought that was really interesting.

Um, also had a chance to walk around and look at hardware. Um, obviously we’re interested to know as far as handheld units, one of the things Masabi, uh, is doing is handheld units, you know, for both fare enforcement, especially on rails, um, and also collecting fares for paratransit sometimes or demand response.

Um, so I was interested in seeing what’s out there for handheld units and we had a chance to look at the gates and validators and it’s always fun to see the new stuff. So there’s some great things out there.

Um, and, uh, also ticket vending machines, you know, I guess I’m a nerd in that way, but I like seeing all that, all those different piece of hardware. Uh, many of them we’ve already integrated with, some of them are partners I’m sure we’ll work with in the future.

Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s fun to see. Uh, Jeff, this has been a really pleasurable conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. If people want to get in touch, eh, with you or they want to learn more about Masabi, how do they do so? Sure. They can just send me an email at jeff@masabi, and that’s M-A-S-A-B-I, so jeff@masabi.com or they go to the website if they ever want to check us out at masabi.com or they can call me

973-3982. I have no problem with getting my phone number out. Um, so feel free to call me or contact me or text me, however you want to get ahold of me, or, or reach out to me through LinkedIn is fine too. Excellent. Well, thank you Jeff. Enjoy the rest of the conference.