The OSPT Alliance, a vendor group that seeks to challenge the dominance of Mifare in contactless transit ticketing, released a second version of its “mobile guidelines” Thursday, which it said would help transit authorities and transit operators to introduce mobile ticketing on NFC phones.
The Moscow transit network, including the Moscow Metro, one of the largest subway systems worldwide, is moving to transit cards based on second-generation Mifare technology, Mifare Plus, an upgrade from Mifare Classic.
LONDON – The head of London’s large Oyster card program expressed frustration with the pace of development of NFC, complaining the technology isn’t ready for London transit riders to use to pay fares.
Perhaps seeking to take advantage of the renewed buzz around NFC, smart card supplier Gemalto and chip maker NXP Semiconductors today announced their nearly year-old or older licensing agreement for NXP’s high-end Mifare technology.
Taking aim at NXP Semiconductors and its dominant Mifare technology, four smart card industry suppliers have announced plans to introduce what they call an “open standard” for contactless transit-ticketing applications on cards and NFC phones.
Two mid-tier bus operators in Slovakia are among the latest to enable their customers to tap virtual closed-loop transit cards in Google Pay to pay fares, using a provisioning service from NXP Semiconductors.
NFC TIMES Exclusive – Large trip-planning app provider Moovit has enabled customers of more than 50 mostly small transit agencies in the U.S. to buy mobile tickets it its app, with more agencies to come, the company confirmed to Mobility Payments.
There is little disputing the fact that mobility as a service has not yet lived up to its hype. And the industry’s largest automated fare collection system provider, Cubic Transportation Systems, said it believes that going forward, public transit services need to form the backbone of MaaS platforms, along with enabling more demand-responsive transport.
As the California Department of Transportation, or Caltrans, sees it, the state’s more than 300 local transit agencies offer a fragmented and inefficient mix of fare collection systems–a fact it says discourages many potential riders among the state’s nearly 40 million residents from taking public transit.
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.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, or WMATA, as expected, has added its closed-loop fare card SmarTrip to Google Pay, following support by Apple Pay for the card last year.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – California public bus agency Monterey-Salinas Transit on Tuesday officially launched a six-month “demonstration” project to pilot contactless open-loop payments. While the agency is very small, providing only around 3,500 rides per day last year, the launch holds much greater significance.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – U.S.-based Cubic Transportation Systems has announced contracts with two more small U.S. transit agencies to move to Cubic’s Umo ticketing platform, as the large automated fare-collection system vendor seeks to broaden its market reach.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – RTC of Southern Nevada, the main transit agency serving Las Vegas and the surrounding region, now enables customers to buy passes for bike share in addition to tickets for buses through the trip-planning Transit app. Although the implementation is relatively small, project backers say Las Vegas is the first U.S. city to launch bike share and transit passes in the same app.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – U.S.-based trip-planning app Transit announced it has enabled 500,000 rides from its app for a group of 13 small to mid-tier transit agencies based in the state of Ohio, though mobile ticketing still makes up a small percentage of total rides provided by the agencies.
NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Although the trend for transit agencies to support open-loop fare payments, including with Apple Pay, Google Pay and other Pays wallets, has continued unabated–even accelerated–during the pandemic, another trend is taking shape: That of agencies adding virtual versions of their closed-loop fare cards into the Pays wallets.
