On 10 October 2025, the Passenger Services Group Innovation Workshop on “More than Just Payments: the Rise of Digital Wallets” took place at the UIC Headquarters in Paris, with the participation of representatives from Trenitalia, FSTechnology, National Railways of France (SNCF), Trains of Portugal (CP), Swedish Railways (SJ), Spanish National Railway Network (RENFE), German Railways (DB), Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB), Entur, Dutch Railways (NS), Benerail, Luxembourg National Railway Company (CFL), China Academy of Railway Sciences (CARS), Catalan Government Railways (FGC), East Japan Railway Company (JR East), and UIC.
Bertrand Minary, UIC Passenger Director, opened the Innovation Workshop by welcoming the participants, who attended either in person or online.
Following a quick round of introductions, Stefano Scarci, EY, delivered an introductory presentation on “Why digital wallets matter for passenger rail”. Today’s landscape comprises three wallet types: commercial wallets (e.g. Apple Wallet, Google Wallet), which store payment credentials and tickets and support tap-to-pay and Add-to-Wallet; government ID wallets (e.g. the EU Digital Identity Wallet, expected by 2026 for EU citizens); and super‑app wallets (e.g. Alipay, WeChat Pay), which bundle commerce, payments, and ticketing within a single system. These technologies are seeing rapid development and ever-increasing usage.
Wallets enable one‑tap travel, instant eligibility verification, automatic delay compensation and alternative accommodation to be delivered directly to the wallet, combining a person’s identity and payment. With this in mind, railways should therefore assess the trade‑offs across different passenger segments of offering services via third‑party wallets instead of having proprietary apps.
Jonathan Hill, Head of Transit Partnerships at Google Wallet, gave a presentation on “Enhanced travel and event experiences with Google Pay and Google Wallet”, where he outlined an illustrative end‑to‑end weekend journey. This included booking online, paying with Google Pay, and saving tickets and credentials to Google Wallet, as well as receiving relevant upsell offers, boarding the train with a ticket in Google Wallet, clearing security by presenting a digital ID, receiving context‑aware notifications en-route, checking in and unlocking the hotel room using a phone as the key, entering a concert with a digital ticket, and finally collecting digital loyalty stamps.
Leye Yang, Head of R&D, Mobile and Digital Identity at Amadeus, discussed “Transforming the travel experience with digital wallets”, As a member of the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet consortium, Amadeus helped design a large‑scale pilot that applies the EU Digital Identity Wallet across different steps in a journey, including using verified identity to autofill passenger data during self‑service check‑ins, completing biometric enrolment off‑airport, integrating biometric enrolment into airline check‑in procedures, and facilitating border crossing. The result is a frictionless, tap‑and‑go user experience.
In breakout sessions, participants developed ideas around three questions:
1. How should railways best leverage commercial wallets today and the super-app ecosystem tomorrow?
2. How should railways make effective use of the EUDI Wallet?
3. How can UIC facilitate common standards and initiatives, so that railways can realise the full benefits of digital wallets?
Following the breakout sessions, several potential actions were identified. These included initiating discussions on digital wallets within UIC working groups, defining a common approach to integrating standards with wallet providers, incorporating digital wallets into future industry standards, clarifying the implications around GDPR and broader data‑protection policies, and finally identifying partnerships for quick wins.
