Is Contactless the Worldwide-Integrated transit card?
A real straight-to-cellphones moment for transit.
When one talks about New York City and transit, it tends to be a total laggard compared to its international megacity peers. But on my last visit to the city, the subway had suddenly gone from horrible to among the best I’ve ever experienced on one metro - paying your fare.
Historically, paying your fare in New York was not a good time. You generally did it with a flimsy plastic “Metrocard” that needed to be loaded at machines in stations, and had to be swiped in a certain way at the turnstiles — lest you block another New Yorker in a rush. On my lastest visit to the city I got to try the replacement for the Metrocard — “OMNY” — and oh boy it was good.
OMNY is a new card-based fare system for the New York City Subway and bus systems, and it’s meant to be rolling out even more widely in the future (although as friends in New York frequently remind me, this expanded rollout — to the Long Island Railroad for example — has been badly botched). While the idea of a contactless fare payment system is not unique — London, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and not to mention many smaller cities have had these for years — what is special is that OMNY is “contactless” (the industry terminology for the tap-to-pay function on modern credit cards.
You see, with most previous transit fare card systems in major cities, the fare card itself as an important component. When in London, if you want the best fare you’ve *historically* gotten an Oyster card, and when in Tokyo you get a Suica card. With OMNY, the actual OMNY fare card is a bit of an afterthought and instead you’re encouraged to just tap your credit or debit card — in fact, it’s not even all that easy to get an OMNY card or reload it at the moment (that’s obviously not a good thing, but it highlights how the card is actually not so central to this system).
Now, to be perfectly clear, London and a lot of other cities also do now let you pay with contactless, but these systems typically added that as a feature later rather than making it the default way of paying — which is a big deal! If you’re curious, the company behind OMNY is Cubic, who also developed London’s Oyster system as well as systems for cities like Vancouver, and Sydney. What’s interesting with OMNY is that because it is so new, with it you get a bit of a window into some of the Cubic devices that will likely roll out to other systems — I quite like the OMNY readers as the design is the same from bus to turnstiles, they have a large screen, and they have led lights to indicate whether payment was successful. You also tap directly on the screen as opposed to above or below it, which is a something I see visitors constantly struggle with in other cities — wanting to tap the screen in our touch screen filled world is normal.
But the good readers and the ability to pay with credit or debit is only half the story here. It was not the case five years ago, but basically the whole world is now onboard with standardized contactless credit and debit (the MTA reports having had taps from cards originating in over 100 countries). In the past you also used to see smaller banks issue cards without contactless, or the issuing of debit cards without it, but this seems to be going away. That means that while contactless used to be a nice feature that could simplify payment for some users like tourists who didn’t want to bother getting a transport card, or regular riders who run out of credit — it can now be the default way of paying, not just in New York but globally.
This might not seem like a big deal, until you realize that this essentially gives you the functionality of “nationwide” or “province-wide” integrated transit cards like you see in the Netherlands or Japan. I constantly used to think about how great it would be if you could use your Oyster or Presto card to pay for snacks at the store, and now we’ve essentially got that… but better!
The reason using contactless as the standard way of paying for transit is so transformative is that contactless has become the standard way of paying for anything in much of the world. And unlike the integrated systems in Japan or the Netherlands, the technology is globally interoperable — your bank card works across international borders!
And being interoperable has other benefits as well. While transit cards have needed to mostly be added to services like Apple and Google Pay individually by transit agencies — meaning most systems still don’t have native support, credit and debit cards are nearly universally compatible, and new banks are added regularly. This payment platform architecture also lets the tech companies add useful features such as Apple’s “Express Transit Mode”, which lets you tap onto transit without unlocking your phone (it also holds power in reserve so you can tap even after your phone has died!).
At the same time, a lot of the policies transit agencies used to use to incentivize adoption of their unique card have been dropped or paralleled on contactless. So for example, in London for adult fares you don’t save by using an Oyster Card versus a debit or credit card — and as systems like London and New York have started to incorporate fare-capping systems (where after a certain number of taps in a given period all further taps are free), these have also been offered to riders using contactless. In Toronto, you can also now use the “default trip” feature (this lets you tap into suburban rail and not have to tap off for your regular commute trip) with credit or debit.
All in all, I see the massive growth in contactless transit payment systems as the moment we are finally mostly moving on from paying with cash by default on transit (which can make transit extremely hard to access if you don’t regularly use cash, as many people do not in 2023) to using digital payments. For existing systems, this will let them get rid of a lot of the complex work required to maintain and manage their own smart card systems, and for small systems they can suddenly jump to an interoperable global standard with basically all of the features of older smart card systems. It’s really a global win for public transit!
hmm, I think some banks added some type of age info to cards so that minors can't use the card to buy cigarettes and alcohol. I wonder whether this could be used by transit agencies to adjust fare for kids or seniors.
I can still see transit agencies keeping their travel cards or investing in one, as people under the age of 18 who regularly travel won't have a contactless card and so need a travel card.