Bernese company wants to sue for SBB contract - and fails

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• SBB wants to expand the popular Easyride function.
• The contract was awarded to the Lucerne-based company Axon Vice following a tender.
• The Bernese company Fairtiq felt disadvantaged and took the matter to the Federal Administrative Court. The competition did not meet all the requirements for the contract according to the tender.
• The court ruled in favor of SBB. They may now award the contract to Axon Vice as planned.

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It is the SBB channel "with the greatest sales growth": the Easyride function. This digitally records a traveler's route - after arrival, they can then pay via the ticket price. Every day, 80,000 journeys are tracked in this way.

SBB now wants to build on the popularity of Easyride: A year ago, they put two new modules out to tender for this purpose: "journey recording" and "misuse detection", which is to be used to put a stop to fraudsters.

The contract was awarded to Lucerne

In Bern, they apparently saw themselves as the obvious choice for the contract: SBB had already worked with the company Fairtiq. However, those responsible decided otherwise and Fairtiq was astonished when it only came third - behind the company Axon Vice from Lucerne and the German company Scheidt & Bachmann.

"Bordering on blackmail"

SBB wants to raise prices - then there's a bang behind closed doors

Fairtiq was so convinced of its own superior suitability that, according to a report in the "bz" newspaper, it took the matter to the Federal Administrative Court: The competition had not even met two necessary criteria, it said.

Potential contractors had to have already sold and "productively" used a "standard solution for automated ticketing" in 2019 - or before. This was not the case with either the competitor from Lucerne or the one from Germany.

Order worth millions lost

In terms of references, Fairtiq saw itself as having a unique selling point: The other applicants had not yet worked on similar projects in terms of volume and misuse detection.

However, the court took a different view. Both Axon Vibe and Scheidt & Bachmann had met all the criteria, according to the ruling. For example, Axon Vibe had already developed an automated ticketing system for Deutsche Bahn in 2019.

With the defeat, Fairtiq loses the prospect of a contract worth millions. The Bern-based company will also have to pay the CHF 30,000 in legal costs.