MasterCard, Visa, and Amex cards replace the ticket in high-profile public transportation trials

By Andy Williams, Contributing Editor

A new way of riding the rails and roads–or rather paying for those trips–may be in the wind at two transit agencies across the country from each other. Both involve contactless payments, but what sets these initiatives apart from contactless fare collection programs around the country and world is the use of branded payment cards (e.g. MasterCard, Visa, American Express).

Most transit agencies–or their vendor of choice–issue their own cards, process their own transactions, and handle their own settlement. But what if this effort was handled by traditional payment card issuers and processors? That is the question that transit managers in New York and Utah set out to answer.