WEBREATHE at Transit Ticketing & Fare Collection MENA 2025

WEBREATHE attended Transit Ticketing & Fare Collection MENA 2025, held on September 16 and 17 at Anantara Downtown Hotel in Dubai.

About the conference

Organised by Global Mass Transit, the fifth annual conference focused on the transition toward cashless and connected mobility across the Middle East and North Africa. Its agenda covered contactless and open-loop payments, ticketing-system interoperability, mobile wallets, artificial intelligence, data analysis, and fare-collection technology.

The programme brought fare collection into a wider transport context, including the integration of public transit with other mobility services. Data generation, sharing, analysis, and privacy were also listed among the topics, connecting payment technology with the information needed to manage a network.

The conference also included a closing keynote panel titled “The Road Ahead for MENA’s Transit Payments”.

For WEBREATHE, attending the conference placed passenger-counting technology alongside these developments in ticketing. The two areas address related operational questions, but they record different aspects of a journey: a fare transaction and a passenger movement.

Passenger counts alongside fare data

Automatic Passenger Counting records boardings and alightings independently of a payment transaction. This can help operators understand vehicle loads, including journeys where the relationship between a boarding and a ticket record is not one-to-one.

Comparing passenger counts with fare data requires matched routes, time periods, and clear rules for transfers or fare exemptions. A difference between the datasets is a reason to investigate; it is not, by itself, proof of unpaid travel. Used with that context, the comparison can support revenue analysis while passenger counts also inform capacity planning.

The conference’s focus on interoperability and data analysis was therefore relevant to WEBREATHE’s work with public transport passenger information. Our attendance offered a view of the fare-collection priorities shaping the region, alongside the role that independent ridership data can play in operations.

Read more about passenger counting and revenue analysis or explore our software platform .

View the official conference summary .