EBSI projects
Digital Ferry Onboarding Experience
Improving all aspects of traveling experience via ferry for EU students, by simplifying by simplifying the onboarding experience.
The vision
Cyclades Fast Ferries (CFF) is a well established ferry company in Greece that provides daily routes to the Cyclades islands, where departments of the University of the Aegean - a key member of the ERUA University Alliance - are located.
Cyclades Fast Ferries (CFF) accommodates more than 1,1 million passengers per year traveling to and from the Cyclades Islands with 5% of these passengers being students.
CFF in collaboration with UAegean and EWC project (European Digital Identity Wallet Consortium) are dedicated to disrupting ferry travel by enhancing the passenger experience through seamless identity verification and by allocating discounts based on the profile of the passenger, during booking. One major discount type is a valid student educational id. This disruption is achieved by verifying passenger’s identity credentials and other attestations, by providing convenient storage of boarding passes in their wallets, and by enabling the instant verification of boarding passes directly from their wallets during embarkation.
The challenge
Designing effective strategies to enhance Ferry passenger experience is challenging.
Today, passengers seek a streamlined user experience when journeying by ferry. Managing various document formats and sifting through digital and paper-based credentials to ensure all necessary items for embarkation can be overwhelming, particularly in today's fast-paced lifestyle. Ferry companies need to improve passenger experience, to gain a competitive advantage, and at the same time guarantee the security of the identification process. These challenges apply for all passengers, while they become even more pronounced for students as well as other types of passengers eligible for discounts, who travel between islands and their home bases or for students visiting the Greek islands to participate in summer schools, workshops etc, or during vacations. Cyclades Fast Ferries, in partnership with UAegean, ERUA and EWC, are dedicated to enhancing the ferry travel experience for students in the Cyclades Islands. Their aim is to seamlessly transform existing procedures, ultimately providing students with a streamlined journey. This includes simplifying every aspect of their travel experience, by only using their mobile phone to identify with the company, book their tickets, issue the boarding passes and embark on the ferry.
The opportunity
Web3 has the potential to revolutionize the ferry travel processes, simplifying the cross-border access to ferry services.
This innovative passenger experience enables seamless verification of travelers' identities and specifically for students' educational identities, directly from their mobile devices, completely eliminating the need for paper-based documents and avoiding personal data transfer between ferry companies' IT systems and universities. This significantly reduces service complexity while ensuring passengers’ full consent for information disclosure, continuous access control over their credentials, protecting them from risks of privacy-invasion or potential identity theft. Additionally, boarding passes can be conveniently stored on and presented from the same mobile device, streamlining the passenger travel process while safeguarding both privacy and security.
A Web3 issuance, presentation and verification infrastructure for student educational identity credentials and issuing of ferry company boarding passes brings together three main technologies:
- Digital Wallets: used by students to receive, store, and send credentials on the move.
- Verifiable Credentials: for formatting, presenting, and exchanging credential data in a machine-friendly way.
- Blockchain: for delivering a highly secure, resilient, and decentralized way of verifying credential information.
The potential is even greater: It covers the whole sales network of a ferry company, since it applies both to the ferry company’s e-commerce site and to travel agents issuing tickets for the ferry operator. This scope can be further extended by including other third party organizations that issue credentials for specific passenger categories, such as people with disabilities, the elderly etc.
The project
Building the foundations of an improved cross-border ferry traveling experience using EBSI.
The project leverages the power of the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) to build the foundations needed for a seamless cross-border student ferry travel experience, uniting the University of the Aegean, the student population of a major University Alliance of Europe with a key Ferry company in Greece/ Cyclades to achieve this.
The European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) allows Cyclades Fast Ferries (CFF) and UAegean to design, build, and operate this next generation digital identity wallet based services.
The objective of this project is to enhance the student passenger ferry experience and by allowing them to:
- Store, share, and present credentials proving their educational identity.
- Seamless verification and recognition of educational identity when booking a ferry ticket, significantly reducing errors in the manual submission of this information, eliminating the need for paper-based checks and increasing the reliability of the information available to public authorities.
- Seamless generation and secure storage of ferry boarding passes (ensuring none can use another person's ferry ticket to embark).
- Enable the presentation and verification of passengers boarding pass directly from their digital identity wallet during embarkation.
The scenario
Discover the scenarios.
1. Book a ferry ticket and travel using Cyclades Fast Ferries
Eva is a student from Paris 8 (FR), part of the ERUA University Alliance
- As an ERUA student, Eva has been 1 issued her Educational ID and ERUA Alliance ID and has these credentials 2 stored in her personal digital identity wallet
- Eva goes to the Cyclades Fast Ferries website to book a ferry ticket for traveling to Syros at the facilities of UAegean (also part of the ERUA University Alliance)
- In order to fill the personal information form, Eva 3 retrieves this information from her wallet using here Educational ID and Alliance ID credentials
- CFF 4 verifies the authenticity of her credentials against the EBSI ledger automatically and completes the booking form automatically allocating her student discount
- Eva receives a booking confirmation email containing a link to checkin and 5 issue her boarding pass on her wallet
- Eva follows the link and is issued a Verifiable boarding pass credential from CFF
- Finally, the day of Eva’s trip arrives and she reaches the port of Rafina (near to the airport of Athens). During embarkation an Embarkation Officer of CFF asks for Eva’s boarding pass.
- Eva 6 presents her boarding pass directly from her wallet
- The Embarkation Officer 7 verifies the boarding pass and lets Eva embark! She is on her way to Syros having used only her wallet throughout the whole process!
The project plan
Current implementation stage and plan.
Next steps
Ensuring a truly seamless cross-border passenger experience & regulatory compliance.
Creating a unified framework for ferry travel, catering to all passengers, not just students, along with vehicles and pets, domestically and across EU borders, accessible through various sales channels like online platforms and travel agencies, will deliver a holistic and smooth maritime travel experience. This endeavor necessitates cooperation among a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including regulatory bodies, maritime authorities, and ferry operators, to ensure adherence to regulations. Additionally, augmenting the ferry travel experience with supplementary services and facilitating direct payment through digital wallets will significantly elevate passenger satisfaction while ensuring the security and seamlessness of transactions.
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