SilverRail Technologies, the passenger rail ticketing platform, has raised a further $5m in a round led by PAR Captial. Previous investors include Sutter Hill, Grandbanks Capital, Brook Ventures and Accel Partners, with the London and Boston-based company having already raised $9 million in a series A round.
SilverRail’s non-trivial mission is to consolidate the world’s rail ticketing systems into a single system and offer this up via an API, thus removing the complexity of selling rail tickets, irrespective of operators, geographies and currencies. It says it will use the additional funding to expand capacity by integrating with new rail carrier inventory systems.
SilverRail currently supports data from UK rail, Amtrak in the USA, Via Rail Canada and the rail system in the Benelux countries, with several more due to come on stream soon, says the company.
Interestingly, SilverRail is also the company behind consumer-facing Quno, which is bringing airline ticket-style booking to rail journeys and launched first in the UK (see our previous coverage). The National Rail accredited site doesn’t just compete on price – it guarantees that its advertised online fares are never available cheaper at the railway station – but also in terms of user experience and the data it has available. Quno claims to offer the “first” visual timetable tool, which gives travellers the entire day’s options in a single snapshot, making it much easier to compare the impact of traveling at different times during the day or week etc. Hence the airline booking comparison.