Google has finally enabled users to initiate purchases of public transit tickets from its Maps app, following delays. Meanwhile, rival trip-planning app providers Moovit and Transit have been quietly moving forward with signing up most of the same small U.S. transit agencies to sell tickets in their apps.
Google has inserted a GPay button in Maps that now displays on searches for bus and other public transit routes in a number of mostly small cities and towns in the U.S. Users can click to buy and store tickets in Google Pay, using credit or debit cards they have on file with the payments app. The service works via an API with software-as-a-service ticketing platform Token Transit, which already provides more than 100 small to mid-tier transit agencies with mobile ticketing from its own consumer-facing app in such cities and towns as Buffalo, NY; South Bend, IN; Athens, GA; and Oxnard, CA.
Users activate the tickets they've stored in Google Pay and show them for visual inspection to bus drivers or other agency personnel. The mobile ticketing offers an alternative to the cash and paper tickets that most of these agencies rely on to collect fares.
