As summer arrives, Cubic’s leadership in open payment systems for revenue management is blossoming with the introduction of Nextaccount, the first of several new products in Cubic’s solution systems portfolio for the next generation of fully integrated Automated Fare Collection (AFC) systems.
The transit industry is on the verge of a transformation, and Nextaccount creates the ability for transit agencies to continue to reduce their cost of fare collection while improving the traveler and customer experience.
The new platform provides the contactless smart card interface and transit fare processing engine that enables transit operators to give travelers the convenience of using a contactless bank-issued credit, debit and prepaid account to pay for travel as well as transit-issued smart cards, as their fare medium.
In this way, consumers will pay for transit services just like they pay for any other retail purchase, using their contactless credit or debit cards as they board buses or pass through metro turnstiles, eliminating the extra step of buying a transit fare card or token.
Nextaccount will also pave the way for mobile payment and ticketing solutions in transit, giving travelers the ability to pay fares directly at the point of travel with Near Field Communications-equipped (NFC) mobile phones.
For transit agencies who don’t want to issue their own fare cards, moving to open payment reduces the need to procure, encode, distribute, and support literally millions of magnetic tickets or contactless smart cards. It will also reduce the amount of cash collected, reduce cash handling costs and the associated infrastructure investments, and reduce fraud and fraud management costs.
Nextaccount is also the newest product in the Nextcity solutions portfolio, Cubic’s vision of mobility in the future. Through integration of regional transport payments and traveler data, Nextcity will deliver personalized proactive information to citizens so they can make informed travel choices. Nextcity does not require the addition of new infrastructure, instead leveraging existing assets to manage cross-modal demand and set regional pricing across modes.
With more than 20 years of contactless smart card payment experience in the transit industry, Cubic has active open payment projects at the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), Transport for London (TfL), Vancouver and the Port Authority Transit Corporation (PATCO) system, the first in the world to use transit-branded all contactless Visa prepaid cards.
Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the multi-industry non-profit Smart Card Alliance educational organization commented on Cubic’s recent open payment platform announcement saying that the Alliance’s transit industry members are actively focused on transitioning to account-based and open payment models, and eventually mobile payment that will utilize the same infrastructure as contactless bank card systems.
“Cubic’s efforts to smooth this transition are tightly aligned with the direction the market is headed,” said Vanderhoof.
More information on Cubic’s open payment solutions for transit fare systems is available online.