Masabi, a UK mobile ticketing company, has secured a further $2.8 million in venture capital funding.

Fontinalis Partners, a Detroit-based strategic investment firm – along with London-based MMC Ventures and existing investor m8 Capital – have stumped up the extra capital.

The money will be used to accelerate US deployment of mobile ticketing and Masabi’s so-called ‘agile fare collection system’ for transit. An office in New York has also been opened.

Masabi is hopeful it can build on the success it has had with Boston’s MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority), which uses the firm’s JustRide product. Mobile tickets now account for nearly 10 per cent of all tickets sold on Boston’s commuter rail network.

JustRide is a cloud-based end-to-end mobile ticketing and fare collection system, which uses mobile apps for ticket purchase, use, and ticket agent validation. The solution allows customers to purchase tickets without needing to wait in line.

What’s more, using off-the-shelf smartphones and cloud-based technology as the basis of the payment infrastructure, Masabii claims its system has significantly lower capital investment than traditional fare collection systems.

“Masabi’s partnership-based approach to implementing agile fare collection means that transit agencies can have a revolutionary mobile ticketing system in months, not years, as we have shown with the MBTA in Boston,” adds Ben Whitaker, Masabi’s chief executive. “Because Masabi takes on the risk of delivering the new service on-time and on-budget, we only succeed when the agency succeeds.”

Masabi already processes more than $50 million in ticket sales per year across its systems worldwide.

In the UK, Masabi counts more than 13 transit agencies and retail brands among its customers, including Virgin Trains, First Group, CrossCountry Trains and thetrainline.com.