There are plenty of cities across the globe where you can pay for public transport using NFC-enabled technologies, this allows for using any of the multiple mobile payment services for a bus or metro ride. One would expect to have the ability to do this in New York but that’s not the case, actually, that’s not going to be the case until 2021 because it’s going to take five years for NFC payments to be supported on public transport in New York.
New York Mass Transit Authority has opened up the bidding process to replace the existing MetroCard readers with NFC terminals for trains and busses, with the contracts expected to last 69 months, this means that the ability to pay for a ride using NFC is not going to arrive until 2021 at the earliest.
Bidders won’t be stuck with the bill for replacing existing readers as the MTA confirms it’s going to pay for all of it. Bidders do have to show that they’re capable of completely doing this job including covering aspects like turnstile monitoring and the setting up of a payments system.
It’s likely that all of this will be done before the given timeframe so folks in New York have to wait for a considerable amount of time before it’s possible for them to just tap their phone when they have to pay for a ride on public transit. At least the subway is getting Wi-Fi later this year.
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