High Street Consulting

About

Two colleagues meeting in a casual office setting

At High Street Consulting, we empower transit agencies, public sector operators, fintech leaders, and urban mobility innovators to embrace the next generation of payments. We specialize in NFC, mobile wallets, smartcard infrastructure, account‑based ticketing (ABT), and contactless fare ecosystems.

  • Founding Mission: To accelerate the shift from cash-based to seamless, secure, inclusive payment journeys across public mobility systems.

  • Our Expertise: Decades of experience delivering end-to-end projects around transit fare modernization, vendor selection, biometric account-token linking, digital wallet integration, backend clearing & settlement, and open-loop NFC.

  • Why Choose Us:
    • Deep domain knowledge of regional and global fare ecosystems
    • Proven track record with integration across card, mobile and open‑loop channels
    • Tech‑agnostic, vendor-aware approach
    • Focus on accessibility, data privacy, and future‑proof scaling

  • Our Vision: A future where passengers, cities, and operators benefit from frictionless digital payscapes, enabling smarter mobility, real‑time insights and financial inclusion.

About the founder

Dries Deetlefs leads project and program delivery across the payments and electronic transactions switching space, with experience spanning banking, retail, and transit hardware and software. He has led fast-paced, high-profile projects with budgets up to $30M.

He led BC Transit’s province-wide EMV/Umo fare collection rollout — a $25M program that scaled from a 40,000-rider pilot to over two million riders — and delivered a $12M EMV-enabled fare program for the City of Edmonton while at Vix Technology.

Before moving into transit, Dries built card and ATM platforms for a new bank launch in Asia, led a point-of-sale replacement across 600 retail sites in Australia, and worked as a technical subject matter expert at Fiserv, one of the largest debit processors in the U.S.

High Street is principal-led today, with capacity to bring on project and delivery support as engagements scale.

Credentials: PMP (in progress), Certified Scrum Master, Commissioned Naval Officer (Electronic Engineering).