MasterCard has conducted a survey of over 1,600 Americans about how paying for transit affected their daily commutes. Overall the survey found that people find itstressful to pay for transit fares with cash. 65% of commuters who use cash to pay their transit fares worried that they did not have enough money to pay for their fare, 44% worry about needing correct change, and 36% have been unable to ride mass transit because they did not have enough money for the fare.
Morning commutes are stressful enough as it is, and worrying about being able to pay for it is an unnecessary stress. Contactless payment with either mobile phones using NFC or contactless debit or credit cards make it easy to pay quickly and stress free. For those who don’t have a debit or credit card, having a pre-paid debit card, like PATCO’s Wave & Pay ANYWHERE Visa® Prepaid Card that Cubic introduced in partnership with its customer PATCO, makes it easy to pay for transit payments and retail purchases quickly and easily.
The survey also found that of people who ride multiple modes of public transit, 75% wished they had one payment card that could be usedacross all modes of mass transit in their area. This is another huge advantage to contactless open payment. Open payment systems will allow users to use the same bank card for transit and retail, and some day even across multiple systems, in multiple cities and in other countries. And why not? Today we can pay for goods and services with one bank card while we travel, and transit is another service where this will become available.
There is a clear benefit for transit riders to have one simple contactless way for them to pay. It saves them time, and even money since everything is all one card. 66% of commuters that MasterCard surveyed typically travel by more than one form of public transit during the week, and almost as many (64%) see being able to use the same card to transfer between types of transit as a major benefit to a contactless payment solution.
To learn more about Cubic’s contactless and open payment solutions please visit cts.cubic.com.
Read more about MasterCard’s survey results in their press release.