Amtrak has been reaping the benefits of wireless purchasing. The passenger train service recently added Spanish language to its popular Amtrak Mobile reservation service and has begun rolling out wireless processing of credit card food purchases.
Amtrak Mobile, first rolled out last June in English, “has been very popular and we’re very happy with the success,” said Amtrak spokeswoman Karina Romero today. Amtrak Mobile has been most popular with passengers on the Acela Express between Boston and Washington.
“People carrying their Treos and BlackBerries and other mobile devices can change their reservations if they are running late,” she said. “It’s much easier for them, and instead of running into the station to wait for a clerk, they do it wirelessly.”
The Amtrak Mobile service, built by Usablenet Mobile in New York, allows users to check train status and to make or change reservations from any mobile device with wireless Web access. That includes about 700 different devices on the market, said Jason Taylor, vice president of mobile products at Usablenet.
About 12,000 unique visitors use Amtrak Mobile each month, Romero said.
Amtrak last week announced the wireless processing of credit cards will be rolled out nationwide over the next year, after a successful launch on Acela Express, Romero added.
Being able to process credit cards wirelessly means faster transactions for users, which has encouraged them to spend an average of $10 on food and beverages, twice what they did in the past, Romero said.
Before, waiters onboard trains were “handwriting the credit card slips, which discouraged credit card usage and forced people to use cash,” she explained. The terminals used to capture the credit card information transmit the data via a CDMA cellular network.
Before Amtrak Mobile, Amtrak passengers could log on wirelessly from a laptop but not a handheld. Amtrak decided to use the services of Usablenet instead of building it in-house.
“Building the service on our own would have been a huge undertaking,” Romero said. Amtrak’s IT staff is busy with other tasks including improvements and maintenance of a “huge” reservation system that the Amtrak Mobile service links to. “Growth has gone through the roof,” she said.
“Usablenet already had a product, which was easier than building something from scratch,” Romero said.
Other Usablenet customers include Delta Air Lines and 1-800-Flowers, Taylor said. Two other airlines are about to announce a service with Usablenet soon, he said.
