Grenoble City Council, Grenoble Alpes Métropole, the authority responsible for organizing transport in Grenoble (SMTC) and Grenoble Tourist Information Centre launched on Monday 16^th of September 2013 a NFC ticketing solution, based on the “validation tag” concept, and built on Connecthings’ platform and knowledge, as part as the MonGroom project.

This project focuses on three topics: mobility, digital urban routes, and improved services to citizens. The area of La Bastille and its cable car have been selected to test the NFC technology in the Grenoble region, as they bring together three key themes of MonGroom: passenger transport, ticketing and passenger information.

Grenoble cable car carries more than 300,000 passengers a year.

NFC tags and QR Codes scattered in the city encourage citizens and tourists to buy their tram and/or cable car tickets and to enjoy special prices thanks to their Smartphone.

Tickets purchased are stored online and can be used with the Smartphone. The validation is conducted through a validation NFC tag and QR code.

Tickets validity is checked on Connecthings platform, through the passenger’s mobile and through the validation tags.

The authorization then shows up both on the passengers’ Smartphone and on the POS software, with a tab displaying the number of validated tickets.

During their trip in the cable car and once they arrive at the top, the visitors can also enjoy a digital guided tour, by tapping the NFC tags made available to them and delivering contextual information.

The City of Grenoble, which has been awarded for 5 years with the label “Ville Internet 5 arobases”, has benefited from the additional distinction “Innovation” for its involvement in the MonGroom NFC experimentation.

On the occasion of the launch of the service, Laetitia Gazel Anthoine, CEO and Founder of Connecthings, said: “This “NFC validation tag” solution has been a premiere and announces increasingly more elaborate NFC tag based services, by highlighting some transactional and CRM features integrated to our platform, and applicable in the areas of transport, but also tourism and retail.”