Railjack

The marketplace to find cheap train tickets and resell yours

The train secondary market is broken

Every day across Europe, millions of train seats depart empty — while millions of travellers pay surge prices, scramble through unsafe Facebook groups for deals, or end up choosing to drive.

0% no-show rate in OUIGO trains!
0% train tickets are non-cancellable in France — and growing
0% cite price or flexibility as a blocker to train travel
0× price for the same Eurostar seat between advance and last minute
0min between each ticket fraud on Facebook or Instagram

The second hand market is too often nest for fraud

Your deal ticket might already be used before you board: the same non-refundable ticket can be sold to multiple buyers on Facebook or WhatsApp or any insecure platform. There is no system to prevent it, and no way to know until you are standing at the gate — rejected, out of pocket, and out of options.

Every informal transaction happens by bank transfer or Paypal "friends and family": there is no buyer protection, no dispute mechanism, no platform standing behind the deal.

£9.7M lost to ticket fraud in the UK in 2024 — up 47% YoY, with half starting on social media

Ticket security illustration

Reselling a train ticket is a real pain

  • Many platforms exist, none are built for this. Facebook groups, WhatsApp, Leboncoin, Trocdestrains, OuigoSwap,… — each with different rules, audiences, and no reach across the others
  • Most of those services are a pain to use, specially when you are in urgency.
  • Official platforms have strictest terms and repays money as a voucher, not cash. That is not flexibility, that is captivity
  • The result: most people just absorb the loss rather than spend hours navigating a market that was never built for them
Platform friction illustration

Non-refundable tickets and extreme yield management are becoming the default

In 2023, 24% of French high-speed passenger-kilometres were on OUIGO which is 100% non-refundable. This is assumed by SNCF and their target is 30% by 2030. Meanwhile TGV Inoui which offers flexible fares shed 13% of its seat capacity since 2017.

As rail liberalizes across Europe — Trenitalia, Renfe, OUIGO Spain — the non-refundable locked fares are the competitive default. Operators are also relying more and more on yield management to maximize profitability, unfairly forcing people to book early and take the risk of losing their money if plans change.

Eurostar tickets cost 7.5 times fold between when they are put on the market nine months before travel, and the departure.

Non-refundable tickets illustration

Nobody knows the rules — and platforms prefer it that way

Reselling a train ticket sits in a legal grey zone across most of Europe — neither explicitly illegal nor officially supported. Operator T&Cs are designed to discourage this rather than clarify.

  • When platforms do allow resale, the fine print is deceptive: vouchers instead of cash, binding to the same operator, a 20% cut, and zero buyer protection if the ticket is invalid
  • There is no pan-European legal standard for secondary train ticket markets — buyers and sellers have no clarity on whether their transaction is valid, protected, or enforceable

Once you have paid for a ticket, you should have full ownership of it, with the right to do what you want with it — including passing it to someone who can actually use it

Legal clarity illustration

We need to decarbonate travel urgently. Train is a great solution for that.

Europe needs to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels ASAP, as its abundance will cease by 2050, impacting every sector of the economy. Transport is an industry which can be decarbonated now and fast thanks to the train, which should be made available to everyone.

Each train seat no-show is a potential extra car on the roads, and a great miss towards reduction of carbon emissions. OUIGO carries 25 million passengers per year, with roughly 10% not boarding: this is not acceptable. Meeting our targets cannot happen if locked tickets stay locked and last-minute fares remain more expensive than a budget flight.

"The seat was already there. The train was already running. The emissions were already saved — if only someone was sitting in it."

Planet illustration

Join us to hijack the rail ticketing!

One marketplace. Every operator. Verified listings, secure payments, fair pricing, and a lovable UI. No more Facebook scams, no more lost money on tickets you can't use, no more paying surge prices for a seat that someone else already bought at a fraction of the cost.

We're building the infrastructure that European rail has been missing — and we're launching soon.

Railjack app on smartphone