MTA, UTA discuss contactless payment programs

Representatives from both the Metropolitan Transportation Authority NYC Transit (MTA) and the Utah Transit Authority (UTA) spoke about their respective pilot programs, which have added bank-issued contactless cards into their closed payment systems, at the kick off to the Smart Card Alliance’s annual conference in San Diego. Both the MTA and UTA are also testing a way to make using contactless cards even more profitable by grouping many small payments together and presenting them as one transaction to the merchant acquiring system, a process called aggregation. Grouping payments would in turn lower the transit agencies’ transaction costs. The UTA’s program accepts bank-issued contactless cards on 41 ski buses in Salt Lake City. Meanwhile, the MTA’s program includes 79 turnstiles in 30 stations across four NYC boroughs.