Guide to buying
Travelcards/Discount Tickets Purchasing
Contents
Rail Travelcards that allow travel under the offer of Trenitalia, i.e. Regional (R), Espressi (Express) (E), Intercity (IC), and Intercity Plus (ICplus) trains.
Intercity travel card
To travel by Intercity or Intercity Notte (night), you can buy Travel-/Discount Cards for Intercity trains monthly or weekly and valid to travel in both directions.
The Travel-/Discount Cards may be issued for distances up to 1000 km in first or second class.
Also allows travel on the Express (Espresso) and Regional trains without being fined but without entitlement to refund.
Intercity admission card
This is issued to holders of ordinary travelcard/disc.tickets or Regional cards or regional with cross-regional validity (AS 40) for travelling by Intercity or Intercity Notte (night) trains. They can be monthly and weekly, valid in both directions of the chosen route. The Admission Cards may be issued for distances up to 250 km if in junction with ordinary travelcards or regional with cross-regional validity (AS 40) and up to 350 km if with regional travelcards. They must be however be issued for the same route as the ordinary/regional travel card or for a shorter route within that of the Travel-/Discount Card.
In some regions (following agreements with the regions of Piedmont, Lombardy, Liguria, Emilia Romagna and Latium) to use certain IC trains you can buy Admission Cards at reduced prices; these cards do not however allow access to the ES*, ES*city and AV trains for any reason.
Intercity admission cards can only be issued in conjunction with ordinary or regional Travelcards purchased at ticket offices or travel agencies - i.e. not with those bought on this site.
Use of the IC Travelcards or ordinary/regional cards and IC Admission Cards on IC Plus trains, ES*, ES* City and AV
IC Plus
Travelcard holders with IC discount tickets or ordinary/regional discount card + IC admission card can use the IC Plus trains without booking, but without guarantee of a place. If they want to book a place, they must ask at the ticket desks or travel agency and pay 1 euro for distances up to 300 km and 2 euro for longer journeys.
To obtain a place booking on the IC Plus trains, Travelcard holders of IC trains can also buy the "IC Plus" 20 bookings booklet ("carnet") valid for 6 months
Eurostar Italia Alta Velocità, EurostarCity Italia and Eurostar
Travelcard holders can go by Eurostar Italia Alta Velocità, Eurostar City Italia and Eurostar Italia trains if they hold both their IC travelcards or ordinary/regional discount card + IC admission card, and also the related tickets for Travelcard holders including place booking.
To obtain place booking on the trains in question, Intercity Travelcard holders can also buy the 20 bookings "Booklet" ("carnet") valid for six months on Eurostar Italia Alta Velocità, Eurostar City or Eurostar trains.
To travel (without guarantee of seat), IC travelcard holders can also buy the card booklet of 20 vouchers, which must be stamped before departure. Please note that this booklet is not however valid for travelling on AV trains of the Rome-Naples section.
For regional Travelcards bought online and printed from customer's own computer and regional Travelcards with cross-regional application with coupon ("tagliando"), it is not possible to issue the Intercity admission card, or to access the Intercity, InterCityPlus or CIS trains run with ETR 470 carriages and classified as ES* City Eurostar, EurostarCity and Eurostar Italia "Alta Velocità" (high speed) trains, or to use them in conjunction with the IC Passes, where allowed.
Travelcards bought on this site for the regional trains
Regional Travelcards bought on this site are valid only for journeys on the regional trains: Regional (R) and are of the following types:
monthly
two-weekly (only Friuli-Venezia-Giulia)
weekly
both Ordinary and Regional fares are 1st and 2nd class.
Travelcards are not valid for journeys on these trains: Espressi (Express), Intercity, Intercity Plus, Intercity Notte (night), EuroCity, Eurostar, TrenOk, Eurostar City and Eurostar Alta Velocità.
To buy a rail travelcard, you must select the departure and arrival stations, the type of card (monthly, weekly, fortnightly), the period of validity, the class, and enter the date of birth.
For monthly Travelcards, the period of validity is the calendar month; for two-weekly Cards (valid only in Friuli Venezia Giulia), validity is either the first or second fifteen days of the month; for weekly cards, validity is the beginning and end dates of the week.
The Card will be issued at the applicable fare rate according to the route chosen by the customer (the customer chooses a train from among those serving the route of interest, and the train then identifies the route and type of train for which the Card will be valid). Should customers want to travel in first class for a part of the journey, they can buy a Change-Class Travelcard.
Holders of Travelcards for IC trains of any type (or of ordinary or regional travel cards and admission cards to IC trains) can buy a Bookings Booklet ("carnet") that - within 6 months - allows for 20 bookings to be made on the chosen route for Intercity Plus, Eurostar Italia or Eurostar City Italia trains. By notifying the booklet's code number, you can request (time by time) bookings for the train you want to use until you use up the number of journeys purchased.
On board the trains, Card holders must show not only their Travelcard but also their booking (or notify the PNR for ticketless solutions), the Bookings Booklet (or notify the PNR for ticketless solutions) and, on request of the on-board personnel, a valid identity document. Both the booklet ("carnet") and the bookings relating to it may be requested at any ticket office, authorized travel agency, self-service station teller, this website and the Call Center (892021). Bookings may also be made with the Ticketless procedure.
The IC Plus Booklet costs €15 and can be used for both first- and second-class travel, depending on the reference Travelcard. The ones for the AV, ES* or ES*city trains cost €20 in Second class and €31 in First, except for the AV Booklet valid for the Rome-Naples section, which costs € 40.00 for both classes
You can buy Travel-/Discount Cards starting from 30 days before the Card's validity begins.
According to the different procedures for Card delivery/pick-up, so the period changes with which one must buy in advance, before the start-of-validity date.
if you decide to pick-up your Card from a self-service distributor, you can buy it even just a few minutes before making your first journey with the Card;
if you opt for "home delivery", then 6 working days must be allowed (except Saturday) for the delivery before you can use the Card (e.g.: Travelcard valid from 1 February 2006 must be bought by midnight of 23 January in order for them to be received in good time by the Home Delivery solution).
Travelcards bought on-line and printed at home (Monthly, Two-Weekly and Weekly) can be bought 7 days before the departure date.
To buy a Travelcard you must be registered on the Trenitalia.com website and be able to use a credit card.
The system distinguishes among three figures (which may or may not be distinct):
the buyer (the natural person or company that makes the order and payment);
the person intending to use the Travelcard; caution! As the Travelcards are nominative, the data of registered permanent address must be the same as those on the identity document held by the Travelcard holder);
the receiver (location of the person, company, college, hotel, etc. the Card will be sent to by priority surface mail).
The system for buying tickets on-line is based on the most up-to-date security technology available today for web transactions. To pay for the train tickets purchased on-line, passengers can use credit cards, the Bankpass Web service or the prepaid CartaFacile card
Trenitalia avails itself of the "e-shopping SANPAOLO" secure payment system, conceived and managed by the Sanpaolo-Imi bank group. "e-shopping SANPAOLO" allows on-line purchases to be made in greatest ease and with fullest guarantee of security and privacy. The transactions are indeed not conducted with instruments managed by Trenitalia but through the servers using the secure technology of the Sanpaolo-Imi bank group.
After making payment, a message appears confirming the transaction on a page of the Trenitalia site. Any appearance of notices from the browser indicating you are being redirected to a non-secure server will therefore be only and exclusively a simple confirmation by Trenitalia of a successful transaction.
To guarantee greatest customer security, the international Visa and MasterCard circuits require that credit card transactions respect the following security measures:
the typing in of a three-digit security number on the back of the credit card, near the area reserved for the signature.
the authentication by the customer on the appropriate pop up, managed directly by Bankpass, using data that have been given previously to that same customer by the card issuer ("Verified by Visa" and "SecurCode" standard).
To go ahead with your purchase, type in your User-ID and password (assigned when registering) to access your virtual wallet and select the payment tool you want to use (credit card, Soldintasca prepaid card and PagoBancomat): the transaction can be completed without the data of your Credit Card or PagoBancomat passing through the Internet. A confirmation e-mail will be sent after all transactions made through the wallet.
Information on-line about Bankpass Web
Prepaid CartaFacile does not require you to open any current account, it ensures anonymity in payments and is protected by the most effective security systems The shopping credit of a single Prepaid CartaFacile, issued in pre-established values, can never exceed 500 euro.
To make purchases using a prepaid CartaFacile, you must first be recognized as a member of the CartaFacile circuit by keying in your card's pass number, the details on expiry date and the password chosen when enabling the card.
After paying from a special page of the CartaFacile circuit, the message confirming transaction success will instead appear on a page of Trenitalia. Any appearance of notices from the browser informing you that you're being redirected to a non-secure server will therefore be purely and simply the confirmation by Trenitalia of a successful transaction.
Information on-line CartaFacile
Please note
For payment systems to work properly, you must use a version of the browser (Netscape or Explorer) which is 4.0 or later, and in which the "cookies" function is enabled. In the event of a transaction being unsuccessful we recommend repeating the on-line booking and purchasing procedure from the beginning. You can do this by selecting "Timetable - Tickets purchase" from the main menu of the Trenitalia site and not the "Back" button of your browser.
The data on tickets payment bought cannot be acquired or processed in any way by Trenitalia as transactions are managed by the server of the Sanpaolo-Imi bank group, in an environment which is protected and secure.
Issue Invoice
If you want to buy tickets on-line by credit card, please note that it is currently not possible to have an invoice issued.
For delivery/pick-up of Travel-/Discount Cards bought on-line, Trenitalia offers two possible choices:
free pick-up from self-service tellers in the main stations.
home delivery.
The system will show the delivery/pick up procedures available for the chosen proposed journey.Pick up at the self-service ticket distributor
Picking up your ticket from the self-service ticket distributors is free and has the advantage of being done until shortly before your train's departure.
Cards can be picked up from any of the self-service ticket distributors in Italy's main stations
Customers can decide pick up their Cards from any of the stations equipped with enabled self-service tellers according to their own requirements; it is not necessary to effect pick-up at the departure or arrival stations only.
Before selecting to pick up your ticket from a self-service distributor, remember to check that there is an automatic distributor at the station you are thinking of using (list of stations).
To pick up your ticket at the self-service tellers, the following are necessary:
the Booking Code PNR received via e-mail after buying on-line,
name and surname used for the purchase,
on the screen of the self-service teller, select the button "Internet" and follow the simple issuing procedure.
If at the departure station there is either no self-service machine or the one there is not working, tickets can also be picked up at the ticket desk of station, if operating.
Home delivery
Travel Cards will be sent by priority surface mail to the address of the receiver during the first working day (except Saturdays) after the day of purchase. No additional charges are applied for sending the ticket.
Printing at home of Travelcard receipt (regional Travelcard)
For Regional Travelcards bought on-line, at purchase confirmation an e-mail is sent with file attachment, in .pdf format, of the Travelcard (printed receipt), containing the identification details of the holder and journey. Once printed, you can cut out your Travelcard along the dashed line. The printed receipt/Travelcard is already validated so does not need to be stamped. Every time you are requested by the on-board personnel, you must show it together with a valid document of recognition.
In general the Travel-/Discount Cards have a calendar validity (beginning, that is, on the 1st day of the month/week/year and ending at 24.00 on the last day of the period). Some fare solutions allow you to choose any day as the validity commencement date. The system automatically gives the choices allowed according to the tariff applicable.
It is not necessary to stamp the Travel-/Discount Cards as they bear the validity-begin date and route.