In one of the first procurements of open-loop technology past the pilot stage for the pioneering California Integrated Travel Project, a group of rural transit agencies in Northern California received a low price for its planned open-loop payments rollout, Mobility Payments has learned. […]
The Metropolitan Transport Authority, or ATM, in Barcelona has issued a request for proposal for technology to help it to quickly roll out open-loop payments across the metro, train, bus and tram networks in and around Spain’s second largest city. […]
In a first for Latin America and perhaps one of the only projects of its kind in the world, the Central Bank of Costa Rica is building a nationwide infrastructure for open-loop transit payments, as it seeks to ultimately eliminate cash on board its buses and trains. […]
Transit officials in Venice, Italy, plan to launch open-loop payments during the first part of 2023, following such Italian cities as Rome, Milan, Naples and Turin in enabling customers to pay fares with their contactless credit and debit cards. […]
Vancouver transit authority TransLink signed a deal with Canadian debit scheme Interac last year that would pay TransLink a total of CA$2.75 million (US$2.1 million) for enabling customers to tap Interac cards and credentials to pay for fares and for promoting the Interac brand, Mobility Payments has learned. […]
A top revenue manager for Sacramento Regional Transit, the agency serving California’s capital city, said he believes there won’t be widespread rollouts of open-loop payments in California or throughout the U.S. until payments networks and banks reduce fees for agencies to accept debit and credit cards. […]
France had fallen behind such open-loop payments hotspots in Europe as the UK and Italy. But it has been catching up over the past couple of years, starting with small to medium-sized cities. […]
Visa has quietly introduced a new interchange category for transit agencies in California, Mobility Payments has learned. If rolled out nationally and across more card types, the changes could substantially reduce the high fees that agencies pay to accept credit and debit cards for fares. […]
California’s “Mobility Marketplace,” which aims to sell transit agencies in the state and beyond the core components they need build open-loop fare-collection systems, is now open for business. […]
Gillian Gillett, manager for the California Integrated Mobility program in the state Department of Transportation, once observed that 97% of Californians never even think about using public transit. “I mean, if we were a business, we would be out of business,” she sighed. […]
