The City of Kranj, one of the leading Slovenian municipalities in digital transformation, has embarked on an ambitious journey to become an innovative, smart, and climate-neutral city. Launching a new kind of city card is just one part of that strategy*.
Innovating toward sustainable solutions
To achieve objectives such as reducing carbon dioxide emissions, enhancing mobility, and shifting people’s behaviours towards comfortable living with reduced resource consumption, the development of digital and sustainable solutions is imperative. Advanced tools for streamlined action planning play a pivotal role in effective city management. Traditional options, such as the closed-loop city card that solely supports public service providers, are no longer viable.
Creating a new kind of advanced city card
Now in February 2024, the city presented the city card CeKR which will become true top-of-the-wallet card for citizens. New card was developed in cooperation with the NLB Group, the leading banking and financial group with headquarters and an exclusive strategic interest in Southeast Europe and its partners — Visa, Bankart, Rekono, Avera, and Ridango. Open loop (Visa) payment functionality will bring benefits for card holders when using municipal and other services, primarily to motivate their daily sustainable actions, to increase the number of visitors in provider’s shops and places.
Blueprint for other municipalities
The CeKR will also try to increase the use of urban transport by charging for transport services according to the so-called “fair price” principle, i.e. by charging the most favourable fare. Matjaž Rakovec, the Mayor of Kranj, believes that their model can serve as a blueprint for other municipalities and cities, even outside Slovenia.
Ridango’s loyalty back-office system
Ridango utilized its extensive expertise in account-based ticketing to successfully contribute into the success of the project creating loyalty back-office system which will provide new and exciting opportunities for the citizens of Kranj:
- Developed a fare-collection system for citizens that seamlessly integrates with the NLB account management system, allowing for both physical and digital issuance of bank-level cards.
- Created flexible UI-based product configuration that allows Kranj to take full control of their products and manage them through the UI. This system is unique in Slovenia, where all other systems are based on scripts and static vendor configurations.
- The system was designed to be customer-friendly and support different usage scenarios. It features fare capping and best fare pricing.
See here to discover Ridango’s extensive array of products designed to empower public transport operations.
*Kranj has been selected for the Mission 100 initiative for climate-neutral and smart cities, from which they are carrying out all activities related to digitization, including the introduction of the card.
