Dear Reader,

This post is a follow-up post from our earlier post on Public Transport Ticketing System posted last week. If you have not read that we urge you to click here and view it before continuing to read this blog.

This is our attempt to analyze the Automated Fare collection system by selecting a mix of countries including advanced economy countries, Asian economies, and nations spread across all the continents where fare collection systems are considered robust, diverse, and efficient.

Ambimat Electronics with its experience of over 4 decades of indigenously designing and manufacturing Payment products in India, wishes to draw the attention of our customers and readers of blog posts towards the Automated Fare collection system.

United Kingdom

Ticketing is also among the features residents appreciate at most. Oyster card, which can be used across most of the transport services in London, makes payments more convenient by providing a wide range of online features. Oyster cards have been supplemented by contactless credit and debit cards as part of Transport for London’s “Future Ticketing Programme”. Transport for London(TfL) was the first public transport provider in the world to accept payment by contactless bank cards, and the widespread adoption of contactless in London has been credited to this. TfL is now one of Europe’s largest contactless merchants, with around 1 in 10 contactless transactions in the UK taking place on the TfL network.

Germany

Tickets are available online and via a smartphone app. The Berlin WelcomeCard is available for tourists that serve as a ticket for local transportation. With a valid ticket, ticket holders have access to all public transport in Berlin: S-Bahn, U-Bahn, buses, trams, and ferries. The fare depends on the tariff zone and the ticket’s period of validity.

Russia

In terms of convenience, Moscow’s strongest attributes are its ticketing system and electronic services. The advances include adopting a unified chip card with the possibility of remote top-up and payments for activities beyond transport services, such as museums. Also, a number of alternative payment options are offered, such as mobile ticketing and PayPass / Apple Pay / Android Pay are currently being introduced. Additionally, the Moscow government has recently digitized most of the services and designed a variety of widely used transport apps. Moscow was planning to equip all metro pay-gates with PayPass and PayWave in 2018.

Brazil

The rechargeable smart card RioCard is used on buses and trains in the city. The different types of RioCard that can be used are Cartão Unitário (single-ride card), Cartão Bilhete Único Carioca (allows travel on two buses within a maximum period of two hours), Expresso (Electronic purse that allows travel on the subway and on select bus services), Bilhete Único Intermunicipal (single ticket valid in select municipalities), etc.

Rio de Janeiro was the first city in Brazil to launch a program enabling mobile NFC-based ticketing for public transport. Smartphones can be used as e-Money, with embedded NFC technology enabling secure payment for public transportation tickets.

Mexico

A wide range of fare collection options are used: (a) The BRT uses the prepaid contactless electronic smartcard called Metrobus; (b) The light-rail transit (LRT) uses paper tickets for fare collection and turnstiles for access control; (c) The metro uses both magnetic-stripe single-use tickets and prepaid contactless smart cards, and (d) The suburban rail uses a rechargeable electronic card for fare collection. A multimodal transit fare smart card, Tarjeta DF, or Federal District Card, launched by US-based ACS, enables riders to seamlessly transfer from the metro to the BRT.