In Lyon, an application transforms eco-friendly trips into discount vouchers

How to encourage the French and more particularly the city dwellers to move in a more virtuous way? This is the headache of many local authorities who sometimes choose “punitive” methods to discourage car travel.

It must be said that some figures are telling, even frightening: 1/3 of France’s CO2 emissions come from the transport sector and 52% of these emissions are linked to the use of private cars. Other figures, those published by INSEE according to which 42% of people use their car to go from home to work on a journey of less than 1 km.

“We said to ourselves that it was not normal to operate like that”. “We” is Loïc Robbiani. Six months ago, this former salesman launched Vazy, an application that uses carrots rather than sticks to encourage city dwellers to adopt more virtuous modes of travel.

The Vazy application is based on a simple principle: each kilometer you travel with a gentle mode of travel such as cycling, walking or scooter (electric or not) allows you to accumulate points. One kilometer thus earns five points. Then simply go to one of the 107 partner businesses to exchange these points for products or services.

The application is based on a form of win-win: users are rewarded for their efforts in favor of more virtuous mobility and discover brands close to home with reductions which, even if they sometimes remain symbolic , still represent a boost to purchasing power. “The advantage for us is to reach consumers who did not come to us”, confirms Benoit Barnouin, manager of a Lyon food store.

At the moment, Vazy has collected 1200 users. The start-up hopes to reach 5,000 downloads and bring together 500 partners by the end of the year before a national rollout for 2023.

The idea developed by Vazy is not new. Other applications have flourished based on what is called empowerment, this power to act that is given (or given back) to everyone to find concrete, practical, accessible solutions to change their daily lives. .

Among these French applications, there is WeWard, one of the “oldest”. Launched in October 2019, in October 2021 it had more than 2.6 million monthly users in France. How it works: a pedometer makes it possible to accumulate tokens – wards – exchangeable for bank transfers or vouchers. Each 1500 steps is worth 1 ward knowing that one ward is equivalent to €0.007… However, you cannot accumulate more than 25 wards per day, i.e. 20,000 steps.

Another application, ROB, deployed in Paris in June 2021 and whose principle is substantially identical to Vazy: points accumulated for each eco-responsible trip, then convertible into minutes of electric mobility, ethical gift cards or donations for an association.

This application offers more diversity in the rewarded modes of transport, namely the bus, the tram, the metro, the train, carpooling, the green VTC, the electric scooter. It also makes it possible to earn points when the user buys mobility equipment or when he repairs or recharges his personal electric vehicle.