Citymapper Travelcard

For those of you who frequent London, Birmingham or Manchester, you'll probably know of the great journey planner citymapper.

Well they've now launched their own version of the Travelcard. There are two versions, one with a few bells and whistles above a normal Travelcard (bikes and taxis). The other seems to be identical to a normal zone 1-2 Travelcard, except cheaper.*

My main question is: What's they're game, as far as I can tell they're plan is to subsidise travel. I guess this is to build user base for something more?

Some more info is here.

*What it actually seems to be is a contactless card, which will be charged normal TFL fares, but they'll reimburse zone 1-2 travel.

I wondered the same. TfL says that they don't give Citymapper any discount, so I guess it is a combination of:

1. Some people buy Travelcards but don't travel enough to justify their purchase. Probably happens more that one would expect, but a small effect.
2. It's a subscription service, so people pay even in weeks that they would not have bought a Travelcard. My guess is that this covers the 'discount'.
3. They hope to make money from people trading up to new products (to come) and offers.
4. They can sell or monetise the data which gives the location and location history of users linked to their bank accounts.

So what happens if for example tap in Zone 1 at say Victoria but go to Gatwick Airport...
a) and I also already have a Anytime Single from Clapham Junction to Gatwick Airport
b) or I try and tap out at Gatwick Airport (no other tickets in my possession)

Reports are that the subscription is of minimum term 4 weeks. Can anybody confirm or refute that claim?

If it is true, Citymaper are offering a very small discount. They are charging £124 rather than the usual rate of £134.80 for Zones 1&2.

Citymapper will make a loss, then, on anyone who buys the basic £31 product and then caps out every week. This is being funded by their venture capitalist backers - but they're gaining a customer and only making a loss of a few pounds a week.

Citymapper hope that they can generate more revenue in the future, though, from their premium options which bundle in private services, which could allow them to make a profit one day. Already they're offering one at £39 weekly.

There may be other ways they can profit. The technology will support the development of their journey planning products. As Chris Butler suggests they could monetise some of the data and may be able to sell it. More nefariously, once they've gained market share they could try to influence the local government to change the rules in their favour, with their users as a bargaining tool for their political lobbying.

While TfL say they won't give Citymapper a special rate now, will that be their line forever? Let's hope so.

Four weekly caps costs more than a monthly Travelcard too, for the same thing. So if anyone switches from monthly or longer Travelcards to Citymapper and uses their card in full, then revenue for TfL and the train operators will actually rise slightly. Conversely, anyone who switches from a Travelcard to Citymapper's subscription but then doesn't use £31 worth of travel in a week will give Citymapper a small profit. This diverts revenue from TfL and the TOCs and gives it to Citymapper. Let's hope this one doesn't happen.

I wonder if TfL are charging Citymapper based on the period travelcard rate rather than the weekly rate?

So if someone subscribed for a whole year they would pay 31.00 * 52 = 1612, while Citymapper pay TfL the annual rate of £1404. That way TfL can say it's not a special rate as such, but Citymapper are still making a profit (if people stay subscribed).

greatkingrat said:

I wonder if TfL are charging Citymapper based on the period travelcard rate rather than the weekly rate?

So if someone subscribed for a whole year they would pay 31.00 * 52 = 1612, while Citymapper pay TfL the annual rate of £1404. That way TfL can say it's not a special rate as such, but Citymapper are still making a profit (if people stay subscribed).

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As far as TfL are concerned it's billed in exactly the same way as any other contactless card.

mattdickinson said:

As far as TfL are concerned it's billed in exactly the same way as any other contactless card.

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That must limit the amount of location data they can get, that will be coming from the linked app instead, and they can get that anyway from any Citymapper user so I'm still not sure what the business case is.

ThisIsSurbiton said:

That must limit the amount of location data they can get, that will be coming from the linked app instead, and they can get that anyway from any Citymapper user so I'm still not sure what the business case is.

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I presume they will register the cards to themselves with TfL and view as much data as is available to any contactless card user.

greatkingrat said:

I wonder if TfL are charging Citymapper based on the period travelcard rate rather than the weekly rate?

So if someone subscribed for a whole year they would pay 31.00 * 52 = 1612, while Citymapper pay TfL the annual rate of £1404. That way TfL can say it's not a special rate as such, but Citymapper are still making a profit (if people stay subscribed).

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I certainly hope that a public sector organisation like TfL would not agree do this!

The press reports say that TfL did not even know in advance themselves that Citymapper planned to launch this, and found out only though the news at the same time as the general public had access to that information - so let's hope that they haven't.

See here
https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2019/02/citymapper-pass.html

Starmill said:

I certainly hope that a public sector organisation like TfL would not agree do this!

The press reports say that TfL did not even know in advance themselves that Citymapper planned to launch this, and found out only though the news at the same time as the general public had access to that information - so let's hope that they haven't.

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I suppose there's little TfL could do to stop them, as all it is is a contactless payment card. Citymapper want to amass data, so it makes sense for them to take a slight loss in order to do so.

Bletchleyite said:

I suppose there's little TfL could do to stop them, as all it is is a contactless payment card.

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Quite. And in that case they are rightly paying the normal rate for fares and are subject to the normal caps.

Starmill said:

Quite. And in that case they are rightly paying the normal rate for fares and are subject to the normal caps.

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Indeed. I'm sure I've heard of banks doing similar things, such as offering cashback for specific types of transaction made using your debit card. The only thing that makes this stand out is that it's a company with a specific interest in transport.

Depending on the deal they have with the bank that is actually supplying the cards, it's possible they have some sort of deal to get some of the merchant fees back.

cjp said:

See here
https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2019/02/citymapper-pass.html

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I find the way that person has put their view across in text very unhelpful indeed and very difficult to read. They defintely do not get to the point, and their sense of humour isn't well executed. Is it all sarcasm? If so, it seems to add nothing. If it's not, it makes remarkably little sense.

Starmill said:

Reports are that the subscription is of minimum term 4 weeks. Can anybody confirm or refute that claim?

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This is true - it said on one of the pages when signing up for it.

As I get a monthly Z1-2 travelcard (@ ~£135) which is due to run out on the 3rd March, I thought I may as well give this a go for a month. Don't think I'll be using it long term, but I'm curious to see what it's like!

Will report back on how good it actually is when I get it!

Starmill said:

I find the way that person has put their view across in text very unhelpful indeed and very difficult to read. They defintely do not get to the point, and their sense of humour isn't well executed. Is it all sarcasm? If so, it seems to add nothing. If it's not, it makes remarkably little sense.

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But he did quote you in the comments section, so that's fun right?

higthomas said:

But he did quote you in the comments section, so that's fun right?

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And then didn't even make any comment on it?!

The londonist article seems quite thorough (although I'm not sure there's much of a market for zone 1-2 travel + bike hire), but I still have one question about this scheme. If you walked up to a Gatwick Express ticket gate with one of these and a boundary zone 2-Crawley ticket, what would they say?

It should be the same as a oyster travelcard from what the publicity says (meaning if you touch in in the zones covered and don't touch out you get charged £0, but it appears it is a contactless card, and if it is you will get a penalty fare (which I'm guessing citymapper make you liable for). This sounds shaky legally however, and does it count as a zonal ticket for the purposes of non-stop splits and the use of Boundary Zone 2 tickets?

A Challenge said:

It should be the same as a oyster travelcard from what the publicity says (meaning if you touch in in the zones covered and don't touch out you get charged £0, but it appears it is a contactless card, and if it is you will get a penalty fare (which I'm guessing citymapper make you liable for). This sounds shaky legally however, and does it count as a zonal ticket for the purposes of non-stop splits and the use of Boundary Zone 2 tickets?

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It's not a Travelcard at all. It's no different to any other contactless payment method - all they are saying is that they will foot the bill for all Zones 1-2 travel, and that you will in turn pay them a fixed sum each month. So it's not an acceptable combination. It'd be different if they were supplying you with an Oyster card loaded with a Zones 1-2 Travelcard - that would be acceptable.

ForTheLoveOf said:

It's not a Travelcard at all. It's no different to any other contactless payment method - all they are saying is that they will foot the bill for all Zones 1-2 travel, and that you will in turn pay them a fixed sum each month.

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That would certainly appear to be the size of it.

As to whether it's acceptable, I suppose it depends how it's marketed. If they claim it's a discounted Zone 1-2 Travelcard, it will probably fail, as soon as people realise it isn't and they've been had (or the regulator/TfL calls 'foul'). But if it's marketed straightforwardly as a pre-paid contactless card, there might be market segment that it will serve among existing Oyster/contactless users who routinely hit the Zone 1-2 cap. However, every card sold to that market segment would appear to represent a loss for Citymapper.

They've now introduced Zone 1-3 and 1-4 to their passes.

It's very compelling imo. I'll join it if it's still around when my 18+ Oyster expires