NEW YORK—Visa and Mastercard are racing to ensure they don’t miss the payments bus.
More than 150 cities around the world now have public transit systems where customers simply tap their card to travel. Many of these systems, first pioneered in London more than five years ago, have direct or indirect sponsorship from Visa’s Global Transit Solutions or Mastercard’s Transit Solutions. And now New York City has begun rolling out its own version of the tap-and-go payment system.
Why are the major payments networks so interested in contactless payments? A new study Mastercard shows customers charge 30% more with contactless cards than they do with regular ones, reported Yahoo Finance, which suggested the payments giants feel public transit systems tap-to-pay systems will boost contactless payments at other locations.
As CUToday.info has reported, consumers in the U.S. have been slow to adopt NFC payments.
In the U.S., according to Visa, 11 out of the top 25 card issuers are now introducing contactless credit or debit cards, a trend CUToday.info has extensively reported.
“The mass transit industry is better positioned than other industries to drive mass adoption of a new payment system,” said the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s Nasreen Quibria. Top of Form