MaaS integration models

MaaS holds the promise of integrating into a single app several modes of transportation. I want to talk here about the different ways to approach that integration from the technology and data perspective.

I am a firm MaaS believer, but I am not going to try to convince you about its brilliance. There are excellent pieces explaining what MaaS is and what its value proposition is.

In this piece I will assume both the MaaS developer and the Transport Service Provider (TSP) are willing to work together and they need to figure out how to actually do that.

APIs

The interaction happens between three entities, the onboard devices, the TSP servers and the MaaS developer server.

The core of the integration are the APIs that the TSP servers (greenish boxes in the diagram) expose to the MaaS developer (yellow boxes).

Those yellow boxes are the MaaS developer services, which in turn, expose an API that powers the MaaS developer app which is not depicted in this diagram for the sake of simplicity.

Levels of Integration

The TSP can expose all or some of its functionality through the MaaS app. Depending on how deep is this integration, we define these levels:

Level 1 happens when the user can, for instance, see the TSP’s vehicles in the MaaS app, and when they tap one of the vehicles, the TSP app is opened with that particular vehicle selected and ready for the user to reserve. Most of the interactions require the user to perform them using both the MaaS developer and TSP app.

Level 2 requires the user to install the TSP operator in order to create an account and provide a payment method. Then, from the MaaS app, the user connects the MaaS and the TSP accounts and then, they can perform all the mobility actions from the MaaS app: reserve, lock/unlock, etc. But the payments will be executed from by the TSP.

Finally, level 3 is the deepest integration, where the user does not need to interact with the TSP operator at all. the best value for the user happens when the integration goes to level 3, but sometimes the TSPs are not ready to go that far and they prefer to take level 1 or 2 before considering a level 3 integration.