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The winning bid for the fast-tracked procurement of an open-loop payments system by Barcelona transit authority ATM came in at €3.28 million (US$3.25 million). That is less than the €4 million Covid relief grant ATM is using for the project. ATM Barcelona is rolling out open loop on an expedited basis using EMV-enabled secure-access modules, or SAMs, for its closed-loop payments terminals.
TransLink is adding acceptance of cards and credentials supporting Canada’s domestic debit scheme Interac to more than 5,000 fare terminals. This project will cost an estimated CA$2.1 million (US$1.6 million), including taxes. By comparison, the ATM project bid of just under €3.3 million calls for purchase and installation of 15,500 SAMs. That bid, however, does not include value-added tax, which is 21% in Spain. Including VAT increases the agency’s budget to a little more than €4.8 million.
• ATM (Barcelona)
• Comercia Global Payment
• Planeta Informática
The winning bid for the fast-tracked procurement of an open-loop payments system by Barcelona transit authority ATM came in at €3.28 million (US$3.25 million), Mobility Payments has learned. That is less than the €4 million Covid relief grant ATM is using for the project.
Comercia Global Payments submitted the winning bid, as Mobility Payments reported early last month. The company, which is a joint venture between U.S.-based Global Payments and large Spanish retail bank CaixaBank, was believed to be the sole bidder on the project. Prospective bidders had a very short time frame in which to submit bids.
The project is noteworthy not only because ATM oversees metro, train, bus and tram networks in and around Spain’s second largest city. The project is also the largest globally to enable closed-loop contactless terminals to accept open-loop payments using new secure-access modules, or SAMs.
The winning vendor, in this case, Comercia Global Payments, will buy and install more than 15,000 such SAMs in existing T-mobilitat (T-mobility) closed-loop contactless terminals used by ATM. Mobility Payments first reported on the project in July.
The closed-loop readers already have a separate SAM to accept the closed-loop T-mobilitat, or T-mobility card, which allows ATM to use more than one closed-loop technology for its cards. T-mobility card has been accepted in 36 municipalities within the first two zones in metropolitan Barcelona only this year. The long-delayed closed-loop project is due to be rolled out in the wider Catalonia region by 2024.
SAMs are microprocessor chips, usually in a smart card format, that can be plugged into card readers. They perform cryptographic operations for card authentication and can redirect a closed-loop transit terminal to read bank credit and debit cards or open-loop credentials in NFC wallets.
ATM hasn’t announced the results of the bid, but a representative from Comercia Global Payment confirmed last month to Mobility Payments that the company would serve as the payments service provider, or PSP, for ATM and also provide the hardware SAMs, for ATM validators.
Comercia Global Payment is a major processor and acquirer for debit and credit card payments at the retail point of sale in Spain. While the company is not providing these services as part of its recent bid, it would no doubt like to offer these services to ATM, as well.
There has been no disclosure of which vendor will be supplying the EMV-enabled SAMs, but observers believe the project will use SAMs from Brazil-based Planeta Informática.
Planeta originally developed the EMV SAM technology working with Visa. There are already a handful of smaller SAM open-loop projects in operation in Latin America using Planeta SAMs. And Planeta is also supplying open-loop SAMs to Cubic Transportation Systems, which has been implementing a project for Vancouver transit agency TransLink in Canada, as Mobility Payments reported.
The TransLink project is adding acceptance of cards and credentials supporting Canada’s domestic debit scheme Interac to more than 5,000 fare terminals. This project will cost an estimated CA$2.1 million (US$1.6 million), including taxes. By comparison, the ATM project bid of just under €3.3 million calls for purchase and installation of 15,500 SAMs. That bid, however, does not include value-added tax, which is 21% in Spain. Including VAT increases the agency’s budget to a little more than €4.8 million.
Little Time to Bid
ATM appears to have given prospective bidders little time before the July 15 deadline to submit bids. That deadline was later extended by only one week.
The short deadlines for the procurement were necessary because the European Union Covid relief funds the agency is using to pay for the project must be spent by the end of 2023, according to an ATM official.
That is why the agency has called for the open-loop service to be fully rolled out by the end of 2023. That will give Comercia Global Payments fewer than 18 months to complete the project.
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