CONTACTLESS: Cubic Transportation Systems ‘inevitably learned a lot about the processes of the payment industry’ through working with Transport for London on the roll-out of contactless payment, John Hill, Managing Director Europe, told Metro Report International at the Transport Ticketing Global 2017 conference, and such experience means deployment ‘becomes easier the next time’.
TfL owns the intellectual property rights for its contactless payment system, and Cubic TS has signed a non-exclusive licensing agreement allowing it to incorporate the technology into its own worldwide ticketing platforms.
The first deployment outside London is expected to be in Miami, with Cubic TS selecting the elements of TfL’s systems which it requires for local needs.
Hill said ‘everyone sees contactless payment as part of the solution’ for transport networks. Visitors who are unfamiliar with a city have traditionally been ‘high maintenance’ for transport operators, often requiring individual help at ticket offices, but with contactless they ‘can now just turn up and travel’ taking a burden off the operator.
TfL’s contactless payment system has now been used by 18 million different bank cards from more than 100 countries since it was launched in 2012, with more than 800 million contactless journeys made and around 5 million regular users.
