Electronic sports and cultural service vouchers for the Finnish Sports Federation

Innovative mobile invoicing and user authentication for sports voucher management

SporttiPassi, the first electronic sports and cultural service voucher, was launched in the summer of 2008. One of the design requirements was to take account of the new, more stringent laws on tax-free sports and cultural services offered by employers to their employees, which sets very high requirements for the payment systems that are used. Another starting point of the design process was that the system, which needed to be easy to use and require a minimum of administrative work from the various interest groups, could be implemented without any new hardware or software investments.

The solution meeting these multifaceted specifications was created by combining mobile telephones and online services: an online service can be used to read reporting data that makes most administration tasks unnecessary and to receive information about local service providers who use the system. The fact that both user and service point identification as well as the payment order can be completed with a mobile telephone call guarantees ease of use and an interface that is familiar to everyone: the service can be ordered and paid for with a simple telephone call.

The underlying solution used for SporttiPassi is the first mobile invoicing and authentication system in Finland where the innovative approach to practical requirements enables the service to be used on a wide scale. The solution makes it possible to bypass the mobile payments that are charged as part of the user's telephone bill and to establish a cost-effective payment system that is independent of the systems used by telecom operators.

Technologies used