Lviv City Card: how we created the multifunctional city card using the inCust platform
Lviv City Card: The Lviv City Card project was launched in partnership with the Lviv city administration. This is a card for city guests and tourists, which makes it possible to use public transport for free, get free tours and discounts from the most popular Lviv establishments.
Features:
- The variety of partners with different financial terms. For example, museums should be free of charge for visitors, public transport must offer free use. Coming to a restaurant, the guest should receive a significant discount that the visitor from the street wouldn’t receive.
- It’s required that any tourist could buy a card in different ways: as a plastic card or a digital card in a mobile application, or delivered via e-mail after purchase on the website. In addition, it was necessary to sell a digital card via small partners without integration.
- The application should provide an opportunity not only to choose various options on the map or in the list, but also to indicate one’s area of interest and view the nearest available places for visiting. Also, the application should be convenient for controlling the use of benefits from the card.
- Since the owner of the project is a municipal organization (city administration), it was very important to control issuance of cards.
- The project needed to be launched without capital costs for the construction of IT infrastructure due to the lack of the ability to manage it by the owner.
- Flexible management of card program conditions and rules is a must.
- The launch period was limited to only three months including integration and mutual settlements with partners.
Business Needs:
- Quick processing of sales and payments in the cloud.
- Convenient rule constructor.
- Customer authentication.
- The opportunity of issuing digital and plastic cards.
Solution:
inCust CLM is used as cloud service (SaaS)
Modules used:
- Coupons and Certificates
- Point of Sale (POS)
- Information and Communications
- Customer database
- E-shop
- Mobile application
Results:
The project was launched in three months without exceeding the allocated budget and agreed deadlines, without integrations.
The inCust platform made it possible to implement a city card at a modern digital level without any reference to special chip cards or banking technologies. Each card it’s a secure digital wallet in the cloud, inside there are customer accounts with certain prepaid benefits. For example, an account may contain two trips on a sightseeing train, $10 for public transport, two museum visits (the user should choose within available options), or some other benefits.
InCust technologies allow partners to access only specific accounts of such wallet and redeem benefits from accounts. At the same time, the system can automatically set restrictions on the use of benefits at the points. For example, you can re-enter the museum no earlier than three hours later, or a tourist can choose only one from two tours.
The platform lets you create a series of tourist cards, setting such parameters as the time of issue and card lifespan, upload images and descriptions. At the time of the creation of such a series, you can upload control codes there, which can help you to control the use of cards. So, the mayor’s office specifies the numbers of future emitted cards to the system, and the inCust platform deals with accounting of sales and use of benefits and allows settlements between project partners.
A tourist card can be issued manually (in the inCust control panel), for example, for printing on plastic, or automatically when buying in an online store, on a website, etc.
The card can be added to a customer’s digital wallet in the inCust platform. This wallet will be connected to a mobile phone number, and in the case of loss of a card, a customer can tell their phone number to the cashier and confirm the use of the service by the PIN code received in the SMS.
Each partner of the project can process cards and charge benefits using a specialized POS software (inCust Terminal) which can be installed on any phone, tablet, or computer. It’s also possible to charge the benefits using cash register systems through the API. Card processing is demonstrated in real-time in the control panel in inCust.
The average implementation time for a project partner was just one day.
InCust also provided the analytics module that dynamically creates all the necessary reports related to settlements and how guests use the tourist card.
Features Implemented:
- multilevel coalition programs with partners;
- tools for identification of digital cards;
- constructor of digital cards;
- full reporting of the use of city card;
- residents of the city can use their phone number as a digital resident card;
- omnichannel communication with users;
- feedback from users;
- mobile app.
When I came to work in the Lviv City Council, I realized that Lviv really needed a tourist card. Before us, many people tried to deal with this task. There were even launch attempts made, but they looked like paper coupons with separable parts or coupons that look like a little book. It was a private initiative by which the administrator of the program collected all these used parts and then returned the money. That was a very complex system, which was inconvenient for museums. Luckily, it was a long time ago, and they already forgot about this project. Then we monitored the situation and had some conversations: we wanted to know how to introduce such a card. The requirement was that the project should not be private: this initiative had to be run by the city or a powerful association, the aim of which would be not to earn money, but to improve the tourist infrastructure and tourist convenience.
A year before the introduction, we began to study the issue of creating such a card. We talked a lot with other European cities where such cards already worked. In addition, I attended a conference of European cities about tourist cards, found out how they worked, what promotion mechanisms they used, and we started to actively work on this project. At the conference, they told me: “Next time you will come and present your card,” so this was our goal.
Actually, we started talking with several partners, and we chose inCust because we liked their approach, they had a desire to make it efficient and systematic. The company also met all the deadlines. It was a very convenient communication, from the negotiations to the implementation and then to further cooperation and maintenance. Another significant advantage was that we do not have complaints about system failures; processing works very well.
This is the only card in Ukraine that still works. There were other projects launched in other cities, but because of an imperfect system, they failed, customers and tourists were dissatisfied.
It’s good that a tourist buys one card and has the opportunity to use public transport and visit museums, tourist attractions. They don’t need to think about tickets, where to find cash, or about possible lack of change. This is very convenient for foreign tourists as they don’t understand how much something costs, and there exist difficulties in communicating with personnel. In addition, tourists can receive various discounts from commercial entities, such as restaurants or gift shops. The card gives tourists significant convenience and savings. Running a city card is an important project for the city.
Maryana Oleskiv
Director of “Lviv Tourism Development Center” Lviv City Counsil
