NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Transit officials in Miami-Dade County, Fla. are the latest in the U.S. to introduce open-loop payments of fares with contactless credit and debit cards and bank card credentials on NFC wallets, launching the service yesterday on the city's relatively small metro network, with plans to expand to buses later.
The Metrorail service handles around 70,000 rides per day, ranking it as the 10th largest metro service in the U.S., a country not known for its mass transit rail services. The new payments service from the Miami-Dade Department of Transportation and Public Works, or DTPW, follows open-loop fare collection services introduced by the Chicago Transit Authority and, more recently, TriMet in Portland, Ore., and a large pilot by New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or MTA.
Transit agencies in Boston and Philadelphia also have delayed open-loop implementation projects in the works. But transit officials in the San Francisco Bay Area, which are revamping their closed-loop Clipper card, have decided against supporting open-loop payments. And small service launched by the Utah Transit Authority years ago was later ended.
