Masabi secures $2.8M in funding

Transit mobile ticketing and agile fare collection company Masabi secured $2.8 million in funding from Detroit-based Fontinalis Partners, a strategic investment firm focused exclusively on next-generation mobility companies; London-based MMC Ventures and existing investor m8 Capital to accelerate U.S. transit agency deployments.

The company also announced the opening of its New York office and the hiring of Josh Robin as VP, strategy and business development, North American operations.

“Masabi’s partnership-based approach to implementing agile fare collection means that transit agencies can have a revolutionary mobile ticketing system in months, not years, as we have shown with the MBTA in Boston. Because Masabi takes on the risk of delivering the new service on-time and on-budget, we only succeed when the agency succeeds,” said Ben Whitaker, CEO of Masabi.

Masabi’s JustRide product is a cloud-based rapidly deployable, and end-to-end mobile ticketing and fare collection system with award winning mobile apps for ticket purchase, use and ticket agent validation. The solution allows transit agencies to revolutionize riding transit by allowing customers to purchase tickets without needing to wait in line. Masabi’s technology also means that transit agencies can now launch mobile ticketing for a significantly lower capital investment than traditional fare collection systems.

Masabi already processes more than $50 million in ticket sales per year across its systems worldwide and continues to see strong growth. In November 2012, the company launched the U.S.’s first system-wide deployment of mobile ticketing for Boston’s Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA).

Unlike a traditional fare collection system which would have taken years of development and cost an estimated $70 million, Masabi was able to deploy its JustRide system in just seven months and at minimal cost to the MBTA. In the four months since launch, it has processed $3 million in transactions, accounting for more than 10% of ticket sales.