NFC TIMES Exclusive – Interest continues among a number of transit authorities globally to move toward acceptance of contactless bank cards and NFC phones for fares, but rollouts have been happening in fits and starts in such countries as the U.S., where some cities there are deciding against accepting open-loop payments.
The interest and some implementations of open-loop fare collection are happening on every major continent, following the landmark Transport for London project more than five years ago, including in such cities as New York, Singapore, Sydney and most recently, Chile’s Valparaiso, which is soon set to begin accepting contactless cards and mobile payments for fares. In fact, Valparaiso is the latest announcement in a series of open-loop payments launches in Latin America over the past several months, although not all are pure open-loop rollouts.
Some are hybrid cards, that combine a transit fare application with a prepaid card branded by a major payments network, such as Mastercard, a concept that didn’t gain much consumer take-up in Chicago and was ended last year.
