I built Tresta to solve a problem I had personally: stuck with a non-transferable SJ train ticket in Sweden
Last month I was in Sweden, holding a non-transferable SJ train ticket I couldn't use. No refund. No name change. Just money down the drain.
I thought: there has to be someone else out there who needs this exact ticket.
That frustration became Tresta — a free, peer-to-peer marketplace to lend, borrow, and swap unused tickets. No platform fees. No payments processed on site. Just a match-making layer between people.
The problem is bigger than I realized:
- SJ (Sweden), IRCTC (India), RedBus — none allow name transfers
- Millions of tickets go unused every year
- Secondary markets exist but are sketchy and unstructured
- There's no trust layer for P2P ticket exchange
How Tresta works:
- Post your unused ticket (route, date, price paid)
- Or post what you're looking for
- We match you with someone on the other side
- You exchange directly — outside the platform
Stack: Next.js + Supabase + Vercel. Shipped solo in ~3 weeks while doing an MBA exchange in Gothenburg, Sweden.
What's live now:
- Sweden: SJ, Västtrafik
- India: IRCTC, RedBus, IntrCity
What I'm still figuring out:
- How to build trust between strangers exchanging tickets
- Whether to add a reputation/review layer
- How to expand to more countries and rail networks
Would love your honest feedback — especially from anyone who's been burned by non-refundable tickets.
Live at tresta.xyz
I know a few individuals burned by non-refundable train or bus tickets, so I could ask them if they'd be willing to answer some questions for you for free.
that would be wonderful!
The "exchange outside the platform" decision is the most interesting part to me. It removes a tonne of compliance and Stripe/SCA pain, but it also means you can't enforce trust through the money rails (chargebacks, escrow, dispute resolution). That's a real tradeoff for a marketplace. How are you planning to handle the inevitable "I sent the ticket and they ghosted me" case without payments going through you? I'm curious whether a lightweight escrow or even just a dual-confirmation step would change the calculus enough to be worth taking on the payments scope.
i believe in goodness in people, thus i have made the platform to increase trust in the society. Such exceptional cases of negativeness can be dealt by blocking these users from this platform so they don't misuse it.
I have already included feature of reporting the users and listings as 'fraud' on One Click.