Moscow to Test Mobility-as-a-Service Platform that will Include Use of Contactless Payments

Evgeny Prokofyev

The Moscow Department of Transport has announced it is launching a test of its planned “MultiTransport” mobility-as-a-service platform, which will enable users to plan and pay for rides on the Moscow Metro and other public transit, along with taxis. The city said it is planning to add other transport modes, including car-share and bike and scooter rental.

Users will be able to buy three different 30-day subscriptions that cover unlimited public transit trips, combined with a certain number of taxi rides to and from stations, said the city. The announcement  added that to participate, trial users must have a contactless bank card or NFC mobile wallet supporting Apple Pay or Google Pay.

This means users will pay for the transit rides with contactless and NFC and suggests they will be able to pay for the subscriptions over the network with the same cards or credentials. These credentials would be registered in one of two MaaS apps that will be used for the trial.

One will be the Moscow Metro app and the other Russia’s Yandex Go app, which at present enables users to book and pay for taxi rides and order food delivery. It’s not clear how the MaaS trial users will pay for the taxi rides, although Yandex Go users now can pay for their taxi fares within the app or pay the driver cash.

In addition to Moscow Metro’s subway lines, the connected Moscow Central Circle loop rail line and Moscow Central Diameters commuter rail network will also be available in the MaaS pilot, which will reportedly include 7,000 users.

There will be three monthly subscription plans, reportedly priced at RUB 2,999 (US$41), RUB 3,999 (US$54) and RUB 5,999 (US$81). All three plans will offer users unlimited public transit rides for the month. In addition, the low-end plan will give users five taxi rides; the middle plan, 10 taxi rides; and the high-end plan, 20 rides.

“With a subscription, people will be able to save up to 10% of their money on fares each month,” said a statement attributed to deputy Moscow mayor for transport Maksim Liksutov. “Flexibility and favorable rates of the service will also attract new users from among motorists who will switch to multimodal trips.”

MaaS is a much-anticipated technology that so far has failed to take off. And standard subscription-based payments models for MaaS are increasingly being questioned, given the irregular travel patterns among transit riders that are becoming the norm because of the Covid-19 pandemic. In response, some MaaS providers are offering highly flexible subscription plans or introducing more pay-as-you-go models.

The city of Moscow was promoting the planned move to MaaS in November 2020, but the announcement Tuesday of the trial did not mention whether the project has been delayed.

Moscow has rolled out other innovative new services following trialing in the past, most notably its Face Pay service, the largest implementation of facial recognition fare payments globally. Update: It also launched a rollout of its closed-loop Troika card on Google Pay and Samsung Pay this week. End update.

Take-up of the Face Pay service, launched fully in October, has been modest so far, but the metro said it stands by its prediction that 10% to 15% of riders will regularly use Face Pay in two to three years.

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