Digicel awaits confirmation to be backend provider

Digicel Fiji is still awaiting a formal confirmation from the Ministry of Transport to become a backend provider for the e-ticketing service.

Chief Executive Officer Maurice McCarthy said their focus is customers and the bus operators, adding that competition will increase accessibility for the purchase and top up of cards as customers will be able to purchase top up cards from Digicel.

McCarthy said this would help reduce long waiting lines and alleviate some frustrations.

According to McCarthy, it does not matter what bus customers board, and what card they are holding, they should be able to get onboard without any issues and that Digicel is willing to provide both frontend and the backend service.

He also said that their objective is to help bus operators reduce their costs by lowering the operators’ transaction fees and also by reducing the daily data costs they incur.

However, Land Transport Authority Chief Executive Officer Naisa Tuinaceva has already said that for now, the only backend service provider for e-ticketing services will be Vodafone Fiji as they had shown interest from the beginning and have passed the LTA’s minimum standard requirement tests.

Tuinaceva stressed that an open public tender process was followed for the e-ticketing services for the bus industry, however, there was no interest shown by Digicel Fiji.

The deadline for all buses to have e-ticketing machines is next Friday.


Story by: Praneeta Prakash