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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – The CIO of Italy’s largest public transit operator, ATAC SpA, said the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated demand for open-loop contactless and mobile payments, but added that old habits are hard to break for customers and use of cash and paper tickets are still popular.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Milan’s public transit operator, Azienda Trasporti Milanesi, or ATM, which began accepting contactless credit and debit cards on its four-line metro in 2018, has begun to expand the EMV payments service to buses. But the agency has much larger plans for the technology.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Another of Italy’s major cities has launched open-loop fare collection, with Turin enabling customers to pay for rides on its one-line metro and certain bus routes by tapping their contactless EMV credit and debit cards, along with smartphones and smartwatches supporting NFC payments services.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Rome has become the second major city in Italy–and one of a small but growing number of large cities globally–to enable riders to pay transit fares with EMV contactless credit, debit and prepaid cards and NFC devices.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Milan is the latest city to enable collection of fares by contactless bank cards and NFC phones, with public transport company Azienda Trasporti Milanesi, or ATM, rolling out the service to more than 100 stations on its metro system. The company plans to expand the open-loop payment service to buses and other surface transport modes it manages.

Vodafone Italia is the latest operator to disclose plans to launch its own payment application, with its announcement Tuesday that it will commercially launch NFC in 2013, starting with a trial this month in Milan.