FEBRUARY 2017 | MassTransitmag.com | Mass Transit | 15 their wallet, and therefore simply touched their whole wallet on the reader. Because the readers now accept contactless bank cards as a well as Oyster, the system has been confi gured to not perform a transaction if multiple cards are detected, meaning it’s important that customers only present one card to the reader,” said Hill. Matt Newsome, SVP & GM, Cubic Americas said, “Th e transit agency usually decides how they want to proceed with the card, so they’ve determined in the past whether they wanted magnetic or contactless. Now that magnetic are a thing of the past; they’re now determining whether or not they want the closed loop cards, the account based or the open payment cards. Th eir decisions for that range from a multitude of reasons, one when you have and open payment type card, anybody who has that card can use it.” Tourists are able to use the system without having to go to a vending machine or counter to purchase a card. Newsome said that transit agencies see their card costs go down, when they do not need to purchase as many diff erent types of card. He said that a fl ipside to the lower cost of the cards for the agency is that there are bank fees associated with using the cards. It comes down to the agency to determine which solution works best for their transit system. “Each agency has their own customer experience that they’re trying to maximize and one type of system needs to be unique to their customer base,” added Behrooznia. “Along with that comes a certain payload of information that may or may not be on the card or be transmitted back and forth from the offi ce to the device. An agency will have additional information for payload fi t that needs to be communicated.” “To reduce the impact of this change, we did a lot of customer education both before and aft er launching contactless to highlight PAYMENT INFORMATION can be stored on other technologies. PASSENGERS ARE able to pay fares through their mobile phones. the need to choose which card the customer wants to pay with, and present only that card to the reader,” explained Hill. “We also regularly monitored for examples of where this happened, and made minor changes to the soft ware to further reduce this as time went on.” Factoring in security One of the main concerns when it comes to fare payment systems is the security of the users’ information. As payment methods further develop to incorporate more technology, it raises the issue about how the companies behind these methods are providing protection for its users. Th ese new cards come with new standards, EMV standards — which stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa. “Th is takes the level of security even higher. And the nice thing about the closed card systems is that the card can only be used in that one area. But like anything like that there are always little holes and we’re always putting diff erent types of measures and protections, but this is the bank card industry’s job,” said Newsome. “We have to make sure that our devices are properly certifi ed to read them. We have to make sure that our back offi ces are properly certifi ed to have the data and through what are called the PCI standards.” To not only protect security, but to also ensure that the system works effi ciently, Cubic must come together with all parties that are involved with fare payment. Cubic has a number of systems a mix of both open and closed loop. Newsome said that they are able to create the systems with some fl uidity. Keeping longevity in mind “Our regular market research shows customer satisfaction with contactless is on par with Oyster, which is a great achievement considering how well known and respected Oyster is in London,” said Hill. As payment methods develop in fare and banking, more people are seeing chip cards in their wallets. Europe has developed these payment methods on a larger scale, but the United States has started rolling out both chip cards and payment through phone apps. “What we see right now with the cards is that there are diff erent types. Diff erent memory sizes, different security, we certainly keep up to date with those for our customers,” said Newsome. “As far as these open payment cards, they’re just now coming into the market. I mean the trends are just going to keep growing, but just like any sort of technology like that, it is also going to be the banks, MasterCard and Visa and how they’re going to fl ow them out. We watch and try to make sure that we stay insync with it as it comes out.” Newsome said that Cubic plans to watch TfL’s fare system to see how riders respond and the ease of the use to the transit system. “Th e biggest change since launch has been the global takeup of contactless mobile payments. Th ese generally use the same contactless EMV technology we have implemented, so we were able to accept payments from phones with minimal changes. We now accept Android Pay and Apple Pay, as well as mobile payments from American Express, Barclaycard and Vodafone,” explained Hill. “Mobile payments have the potential to provide customers with some great additional benefi ts, such as quicker access to their bank account while travelling as well as live travel information, and we have worked with Google to introduce a range of bespoke features such as incomplete journey notifi cations into Android Pay. As more companies see the benefi t of these innovations, I’m hoping customers will see more features and off ers linked to mobile payments, which can only look to improve the payment experience for customers.”
MassTransit_February_2017
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