Snowball’s solution enables mobile virtual cards to work perfectly with a public transit agency’s existing infrastructure.

No upgrade to existing infrastructure is required — not for metro, bus or ferries, nor for vending machines, ticketing office readers, service desk readers or diagnosis and lab testing equipment.

For the same reason, the existing AFC backend card ticketing platform can be maintained, as can the agency’s business processes, such as the established product and fare structures.

Snowball provides a totally seamless integration, which saves transit agencies precious time, money and resources.

Unlike banking card transactions, in which the reader is always online and account and balance information is managed in the backend, virtual transit cards manage the credentials, including the balance, in the card itself. The security of a virtual card therefore should not be less secure than the existing physical transit card.

Snowball’s solution has no compromise on security, due to the independent hardware eSE microprocessor, which offers the same level of security as a bank card — CC EAL5+ security level certified.

The user suffers no compromise on performance either, as the virtual card works quickly and all the time, whether their phone or wearable is turned on or off. The user just needs to tap the phone to the reader, without any additional actions.

Snowball’s OnBoard is compatible with smartphones, wearables and Android as well as iOS.

To guarantee fast, predictable launch planning for the service, Snowball provides a whole product offering, including a custom branded app, an easy-to-integrate virtual card management platform and the onboarding of all compatible devices.

Snowball offers an end-to-end technology solution that meets all of the public transit agency’s requirements. In addition, Snowball provides professional virtual card service operation support, including second-line customer care support, on-going lab testing to onboard new devices and even financial settlement support.

Public transit agencies need budgeted, stable infrastructure services to support the highest service levels for their virtual card issuance and life cycle management. To address this requirement, Snowball offers a cloud-based delivery and maintenance service for OnBoard™.

Snowball is an independent ecosystem and a neutral company with respect to device makers. Snowball’s solution is open to support any card scheme or technology, regardless of proprietary card standards, like MIFARE Classic, MIFARE DESFire EV1/EV2, MIFARE Plus L1/L3, or open card standards like Calypso, ITSO, OSPT and other schemes.