Apple-sponsored NFC Forum working to bring contactless payments to U.S. public transit

The NFC Forum — an industry lobbying group that counts Apple as a board member — on Wednesday announced a new partnership with the American Public Transportation Association that will see the two groups working to broaden NFC support among public transit operators in the U.S.

As part of the collaboration, the NFC Forum and APTA will create and distribute training materials, customer research, and other educational programs to promote NFC adoption by transit operators. In addition, APTA will expand its own participation in international NFC- and tranport-related working groups.

"NFC will improve the passenger experience by linking passengers with mobile phones and public transit fare payment, and by increasing the opportunities to share digital content to improve the transit passenger convenience," APTA chief Michael Melaniphy said in a release.

The use of NFC payments for transit networks has become increasingly popular around the world as operators work to make lines more efficient. Of the world's 10 busiest metro systems, only New York City and Mexico City have yet to implement contactless fare cards — though New York is in the process of doing so, setting a target date of 2020.

Apple is well positioned to benefit from any expansion of NFC in the U.S. thanks to Apple Pay, and the company has already seen success with public transit operators. Commuters in London can pay their fares through the NFC-equipped iPhone or Apple Watch.

Apple joined the NFC Forum as a sponsor member last August. The company is represented on the body's board of directors, by Director of Wireless Systems Engineering Aon Mujtaba.

13 Comments

aaarrrgggh 1607 comments · 18 Years

About 8 years ago

Don't transit agencies go to proprietary systems to reduce transaction cost?

tzm41 95 comments · 8 Years

aaarrrgggh said:

Don't transit agencies go to proprietary systems to reduce transaction cost?

I think Apple could agree on a reduced transaction fee for public transit systems for the broader market coverage, and convenience of the public, as opposed to the high percentage they charge for credit transactions.

mike1 3430 comments · 10 Years

tzm41 said:

aaarrrgggh said:

Don't transit agencies go to proprietary systems to reduce transaction cost?

I think Apple could agree on a reduced transaction fee for public transit systems for the broader market coverage, and convenience of the public, as opposed to the high percentage they charge for credit transactions.

And they would save a lot by not having to produce cards for every customer.

ksec 1502 comments · 18 Years

aaarrrgggh said:

Don't transit agencies go to proprietary systems to reduce transaction cost?

I wonder if these are paid at the same rate. It is hard to imagine transport uses of NFC charges at normal Credit Card Rate of 1+%.

Once this is lowered to a point where even proprietary system could not complete then it would make financial sense to switch. I think the threshold depends on regions. London's Oyster Card was definitely more expensive to run then NFC Credit Card with 1% Charges.

For places like Hong Kong, Singapore or Japan, my guess it needs to be around below 0.5%.

I was also thinking how do these transportation companies protect them from price hike in the future?

tokyojimu 530 comments · 17 Years

Chicago's system accepts NFC credit cards, but you get charged full fare at each boarding unless you register the card number, at which point I'm guessing they treat it privately and don't have to pay CC charges. Can people register their Apple Pay pseudo-CC number, I wonder?