The CTA in Chicago allows you to pay for rides on trains and busses using a contactless card or Apple Pay/Android Pay. This also works in London, UK.
In Washington DC, at least as of January, you still needed a SmarTrip card for the Metro. I have leftover cards as well from NYC and Boston. It’s been a while since I’ve been to Philadelphia, but I remember having to use some sort of a transit card there as well.
Obviously, the transit systems make money on leftover fare money as well as cards that get lost. But, it would seem to speed things up if transit systems allowed payment via a contactless card or phone pay.
The San Francisco Bay Area has the Clipper Card, which is accepted on all the transit agencies in the area, including BART, CalTrain, and all the various local transit agencies. I’m not sure if that take Apple Pay / Android Pay.
Which makes me wonder - does any transit system accept outside cards which would have a fee deducted? You’d think the overhead would be so high that the answer is no. The Hong Kong Octopus Card is used throughout the city (and is contactless) but it was set up by the transit agency.
Lots of them: The Clipper card has been mentioned. In Los Angeles there is the Tap card. New York is in the process of switching from MetroCards to a new contactless card called Omny.
Around the world it’s extremely common. In London it’s Oyster. In Montreal it’s Opus. In Hong Kong its Octopus. In Tokyo it’s Pasmo/Suica.
Transit systems around the world are switching to them because they work much better for everybody.
By “outside cards” do you mean credit/debit cards? BART vending machines accept credit card payments for reloading Clipper Cards and purchasing regular BART tickets, so in a way they already accept them, just not at the actual fare gate.
I was actually thinking about this earlier today. Many parking lots now allow you to simply swipe a credit card on the way in and swipe the same card on the way out, as opposed to taking a ticket. It tracks how long you parked by remembering your card number. I don’t see why a transit system like BART couldn’t do something similar and track what station you entered and exited at based on a credit card number. Apple Pay wouldn’t work though since it doesn’t transmit your actual account number but rather a code that changes with each transaction. But I could imagine something like a Clipper Card app that uses the same NFC technology as Apple Pay, allowing you to simply tap your phone at the fare gate.
Most places I’ve dealt with - BART and MTA in New York, take credit cards at fare machines - or online. But the average purchase is a lot bigger (and less frequent) than doing it at the fare gate.
The Clipper Card does this already. FastTrack (our bridge payment system) can be used for airport parking, and it remembers when you entered since you don’t do anything but drive through upon exit.
In East Asia, I quickly became addicted to the convenience of NFC cards that were widely accepted beyond the transit system. Japan’s Pasmo and Suica cards have been mentioned, but Taipei’s EasyCard, Hong Kong’s Octopus cards, and Seoul’s T-money can be used widely at convenience stores, coffee shops, and tourist attractions. When used to hire a train station locker in Japan, your card remembers what locker and opens it when you return.
A number of other cities and cards have hoped for acceptance beyond the transit system, but not all that many have achieved it.
1: Moving from millions of transactions in petty cash to electronic payment
2: Adopting an electronic payment system that, in principle, ought to be capable of being accepted more widely. Here there can be a “first adopter” problem, in that later systems gain more traction. London’s Oyster is one such: it saved TfL however many costs in accounting for coins and notes, but for whatever reason its specific technology wasn’t adopted even by by other transport operators up and down the country. Likewise, I believe the Paris Navigo, which has been slow to become as flexible as Oyster. In the Netherlands, they went for a nationwide OV-Kaart for public transport (but still retained a range of paper tickets).
2.5: But all that was before contactless bank and credit cards and phone pay systems became widely adopted: as they have, it became obvious that they have the advantage over proprietary systems like Oyster, that they are already usable across a complete range of transactions.
I’m guessing the OP was wanting to know about transit systems that allow using NFC or “Paywave” bank cards at the faregate.
Yes, you can use a Clipper card at BART stations, on Muni buses, etc., but AFAIK, there’s no way for a visitor to use their debit card or phone at the faregate. They have to buy a Clipper card for each person in their group after figuring out what they need to load on the card above and beyond the two or three bucks to buy the card. Guess too low, and they may not be able to travel if there’s no Clipper machine nearby (such as on a bus) or if the machine is broken and they can’t reload. Guess too high, and they make an unwilling gift to the MTC when they go home.
Compare this to Chicago, where visitors can just tag their phone at the turnstile and get in without buying the CTA’s card or trying to figure out how much they need to preload. I used my phone to get around Chicago for a day or two last year, and it works quite well and automagically figuring out discounts and transfers.
Pamplona kind of went the other way around years ago, but it wasn’t contacless yet: the “wallet card” (rechargeable) offered by the local-government owned credit union could be used to pay for fare in the area’s buses, at the same reduced rate as if you had a multi-trip card. It could also be used in combination with your subscription: you still pinged the wallet card (helps keep track of usage, which in turn helps set up frequencies) but the system checked that you were a subscriber and didn’t deduct any money. A couple of bank absorptions later, the cards used in the buses are contactless but the credit union has disappeared.
Exactly. I was doing some cleaning last week and realized how many old transit cards that I still had and how much easier it would be if every transit system allowed contactless payment. The CTA isn’t perfect, but it’s so easy to pay with your phone or a contactless credit card, much easier for a person getting off a plane at Ohare or Midway to jump on the orange or blue line without having to buy a Ventra card. Also, for me, as a local, it’d great. While I do have a monthly pass on my Ventra card, the day I leave it at home will inevitably be freezing cold or pouring rain, so makes it much easier.
I bet I have over $100 in unused money sitting on various transit cards right now.
Philadelphia has been rolling out a stored value payment card called SEPTA Key in fits and starts. It’s fully operational on all services except commuter trains (Regional Rail), on which only multi-ride passes are working. SEPTA recently indicated stored value payments are expected to be available on trains by December, but overall the Key system has been plagued by delays and hard to use kiosks and websites. SEPTA has already phased out tokens in favor of the Key system, but the legacy passes (TransPasses and TrailPasses) are still available.
Actually, on certain lines of the NYC subway you can already use Apple Pay and similar, as well as credit or debit cards with NFC chips, at the turnstile. Details here, including the rollout plan, which calls for the whole subway system to be covered by the end of 2020. The OMNY card comes later.