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It’s clear that the MTA project in New York is the new showcase for open-loop contactless fare payments that Visa and Mastercard are touting, taking the place of Transport for London’s open-loop service. While growth of contactless fare payments is still going strong in London, it has been more than seven years since the service launched there and the payments networks are seeking to build adoption in the U.S.
Both Visa and Mastercard said that roughly one-third of domestic transactions from cards carrying their brands are now contactless globally. And both pointed to the open-loop fare payments service that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York launched in May 2019 as helping to promote further growth of contactless payment in the U.S.
• Visa
• Mastercard
• Metropolitan Transportation Authority
The heads of the two largest payments networks in the U.S., Visa and Mastercard, predict strong growth for contactless payments in the U.S., with Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga noting that 70% of U.S. Mastercard-branded cards in the U.S. are coming up for reissue over the next 12 to 14 months, and most of these cards will be issued with a contactless interface. A large number of Visa-branded cards will be reissued with a contactless interface during that period, as well.