NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – In a move that could enable more large transit agencies to offer NFC mobile payments with their closed-loop transit cards, U.S.-based Cubic Transportation Systems has signed an agreement with Google to integrate contactless transit cards with Google Pay. Among the agencies planning to support the service are those serving Google’s home base in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York.
The closed-loop mobile payments service is an alternative or an option to open-loop credit, debit and prepaid EMV cards or these cards loaded into NFC wallets, including with Apple Pay and Google Pay. Google has already enabled closed-loop transit payments for a handful of mostly mid-tier and smaller cities, including in Melbourne, Australia; Birmingham and the West Midlands, in the UK; Portland, Ore., and Las Vegas in the U.S.; as well as with Suica cards that can be used to pay fares in Tokyo and the rest of Japan. None of these projects involve Cubic, the largest fare collection systems integrator globally.
The closed-loop mobile payments in Melbourne and Las Vegas are part of Google’s earlier deal announced in March 2018 with Mifare ticketing technology provider NXP Semiconductors to support provisioning of closed-loop transit cards in Google Pay wallets on Android phones. Portland, Ore., and the West Midlands also use Mifare technology, but did not work directly with NXP. All use host card emulation technology, which is also commonly used for retail payments from the Google Pay wallet.
