NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or MTA, says it continues to see steady growth of its open-loop fare payments service, OMNY, announcing 50 million taps by customers using NFC wallets and bank cards to ride the massive New York City Subway and the city’s buses.
MTA has recorded the 50 million open-loop transactions since May of 2019, when it launched OMNY as a large pilot. MTA, the largest transit authority in the U.S., had rolled out 15,000 contactless terminals at all 472 subway stations in New York City proper and all 5,800 of the city’s buses by the end of 2020. And for the first time, MTA broke down the share of open-loop transactions compared with total transactions on the subway versus buses.
Those figures show that taps at subway gates accounted for a much higher percentage of total taps, at 12.4%, compared with buses, at 4.5%, as of March 8. Combined, open-loop fare payments made up nearly 10% of all fare transactions for the subway and buses, up from around 4% a year earlier. And the figure is expected to increase considerably over the next year, said MTA.
