We are often asked about different ways to top-up a Snapper. I thought it would be useful to share our views on top-ups and why we do things the way we do.
Snapper is based on a smartcard using stored value technology. Stored value means that money is stored electronically and securely on your card. Our goal is simple – we want all transactions with Snapper to be instant. In this way, customers are able to use their Snapper card to pay instantly for everyday items like public transport, taxis and convenience retail products.
This is quite different to money that is stored in a bank account or accessed via a credit card. In those situations, the card doesn’t store the money. A credit or debit card identifies you as the account holder and allows a terminal to communicate with a bank to authorise the transfer of funds. That’s why Snapper is so fast for making everyday payments – the transaction is literally taking place between the card and the terminal with nothing in between.
Top-up is an important part of the customer experience for Snapper – it’s how money gets onto your Snapper. We are frequently asked by customers for other top-up options. It was one of the major drivers behind the development of Snapper Mobile.
I wanted to share our top-up standard and why we won’t look at solutions that don’t meet that standard.
Let’s look at what is needed for a great top-up experience.
Firstly, we need to understand the customer’s context. Customers most regularly use their Snapper when they want to do something quickly, without the need for handling cash or dealing with change.
Secondly, we need to understand what’s required to make a top-up happen. There are two steps here:
1. The top-up amount needs to be collected from the customer – this happens with an EFTPOS or credit card transaction or when cash is handed over to a retailer
2. Putting the amount on the Snapper securely.
Customers tell us they are greatly inconvenienced when they don’t have enough money on their Snapper to do what they want to do – it means that they miss the bus, can’t buy their lunch or can’t pay for their taxi ride. So it’s in our interests to make top-up as widely available as we can, and to the best standard possible.
We want our customers to have the best experience that they can with their Snapper, including top-up.
A Snapper top-up has to meet the following criteria:
1. Top-up must be instant.
This means that the money should be collected from the customer and loaded onto the card in the same transaction, making the money available immediately for use on a customer’s Snapper card after the top-up is initiated.
Data analysis shows us that customers use their Snapper to pay for something very soon after top-up. The best way to ensure the customer has confidence that they can use their Snapper is to make the top-up process instant.
Because your money is stored directly on your Snapper, it means that for an immediate top-up there has to be direct communication between your Snapper and a “networked device” that processes your payment. This happens in retailers that offer top-up, at self-serve kiosks, using a Touch2Pay smartphone with Snapper Mobile, or using a device like a Snapper Feeder to top-up from your Mac or PC.
2. Be clear and unambiguous.
Customers want confirmation that their top-up has been successful and that their money is available for use immediately. This builds trust in the service. For this to happen, there has to be a connection between:
- a display device,
- a form of Snapper reader, and
- your Snapper.
In this way the display can confirm to the customer the exact balance that is on the Snapper that can be used at that time.
We do allow for an online transaction history and balance but these are not as timely as reading the Snapper directly.
For transport transactions in particular, typically there is a 24-hour processing time as the buses go back to depots to upload their transactions to Snapper. We think that customers find that acceptable when looking at historical issues such as checking their transaction history. However, it’s not a good enough solution for a customer to confirm whether the top-up they just paid for can be used right now.
As a result, any form of online initiated top-up without direct connection to the Snapper via a device like a Snapper Feeder or Snapper Mobile can only ever be a “predicted balance”. We think that opens up un-necessary questions for the customer – how do I know if my online top-up is on my Snapper? And if its not there, when will it be there ?
3. Predictable and reliable
When a top-up is applied to your card, it needs to be predictable and controllable. We solve this by making our top-ups immediate. There is nothing more predictable than knowing that when you hold your card to the Snapper reader, that the top-up is about to occur, and a split second later it does. It also has to have built-in retry mechanisms if the transaction breaks down in some way.
The challenge of online top-up is in the collection
Customers sometimes ask us to implement top-ups that are initiated on-line and collected on-bus. This seems like a product that would be useful for customers, however there are a range of challenges to overcome to make this work for the customer.
This is a two-part transaction. The first part is easy – an online transaction that takes money from your credit card or bank account. These days, these transactions can be cleared very quickly for credit cards and within 24 hours for a direct debit. The second part is much harder – delivering the top-up to your Snapper when you next board the bus.
The major challenge to overcome is making the top-up instant and predictable. This is made much more difficult as buses are not online. They collect their data and upload Snapper transactions when they go back to the bus depot via wifi.
How will the customer know that the bus they are about to catch will let them collect the top-up they initiated earlier?
In short, without significant technology change, the customer can’t know. Buses are not networked, and don’t always go back to depot overnight to pick up new operating data, including online top-up instructions.
In the best case, our assessments suggest a minimum 24 hour delay before a Snapper could collect a top-up. In a worst case scenario, this could be 72 hours. Then depending on your bank’s rules for clearing an online bank transaction (eg. a direct debit), you may be looking at another 24 hours on top of that. That’s a lag of between two to four days to pick up a top-up. Customers top-up on average every 10 days so this is a very significant delay.
What this would lead to is a poor experience for a function that customers expect to be instant. We’ve invested a lot into investigating and developing solutions for this and they simply don’t meet the standard that customers expect. So we won’t take them to market.
Other systems do support online topup. For a bus solution, the experience is poor. Online top-ups take days to get to the customer and sometimes need to be collected from a defined place. We would much rather build the best retail network so customers can top-up whenever they want.
Where it can work acceptably is when the majority of travel is on rail, as rail ticketing devices are usually networked. This can lead to an acceptable experience, although feedback from these markets indicates a level of inconsistency which would be concerning in the New Zealand market. However, we think this is an opportunity worth keeping an eye on.
Customers expect top-up of their smartcards to be instant, clear, predictable and reliable.
We implement Snapper top-up in this way so that every time a customer performs a top-up, the money is instantly available to use. This includes the our latest product, Touch2Pay with Snapper Mobile. The ability to top up a Snapper card with your smartphone is one of the most used features of Touch2Pay with Snapper Mobile.
We’ve invested in the development and investigation of several alternatives, including online top-up, and none of them achieve the minimum standard that customers expect. As new technology develops, including online ticketing equipment, this may change.
We’ll continue to develop top-up alternatives because we know that customers need and want them. When they meet the standards that New Zealand customers expect, you can be sure that we will make them available.
We’re always working to improve the coverage of the Snapper top-up footprint.
Touch2Pay with Snapper Mobile is the latest product we have released and is the best way to top up instantly wherever you are. The Snapper Map shows you where all the Snapper top-up retailers, kiosks and service centres are located. And if you prefer to top up from the convenience from your computer, you can pick up a Snapper Feeder right now for just $25 from the Snapper Store and have it delivered to your door.