Transit Contactless Open Payments: Technical Solution for Pay As You Go
Publication Date: September 2018
The goal of the Transit Contactless Open Payments Working Committee is for interested stakeholders to work collaboratively to identify possible solutions that address the challenges associated with the implementation of contactless acceptance terminals at gated customer points of entry within the unique retail environment of the U.S. and Canadian public transit market.
The Working Committee is using a use case approach to identify specific scenarios and the challenges associated with those scenarios for transit merchants of contactless open payments acceptance in order to meet the following objectives of the Working Committee:
- Create and/or identify potential payment network-agnostic solutions that meet stakeholder needs and preferences for POE contactless payment card acceptance, for both attended and unattended terminals, specific to the distinct features of the transit retail environment.
- Viable solutions will need to address acceptance challenges for mobile and other form factors that are valid contactless payment credentials that can be resolved through technical implementations.
- Viable solutions will need to encompass acceptance of prepaid and gift cards, electronic benefit cards and transit-issued cards, along with credit and debit cards.
- Areas that require a business solution(s) and best practices for resolving those business issues may be identified but will be out of scope for resolution as Working Committee activities.
- Understand each stakeholder group’s business needs and preferences for contactless payments acceptance at transit POEs.
- Understand the potential impact of identified solutions on each stakeholder group, including customers.
The scope for this paper is to identify and provide guidance for technical solutions that could be used to implement contactless open payments in transit using the Working Committee-defined Use Case 1 – Pay As You Go/Card and Use Case 2 – Pay As You Go/Mobile Device. This use case is defined as follows:
- Use Case 1 – Pay As You Go/Card: The customer taps a contactless EMV card issued by a financial institution at the transit point of entry to pay for a single ride through a Pay As You Go transaction and gain access to the subway or bus. The customer taps in only. The customer must receive a go/no go type prompt within a sub-second.
- Use Case 2 – Pay As You Go/Mobile Device.The customer taps a mobile device at the point of entry to pay for a single ride through a Pay As You Go transaction and gain access to the subway or bus. The customer taps in only. The customer must receive a go/no go type prompt within a sub-second.
The white paper covers the following topics:
- Background on the transit environment
- Description of the two Pay As You Go use cases – with transit merchant, acquirer/processor and issuer requirements
- Technical functional proposal following the three pillars to secure a transaction: card authentication, cardholder verification and financial authorization
Business risks and challenges are out of scope. Additional use cases based on other scenarios outlined in the white paper are expected to be addressed by the Working Committee in future projects.
About the Transit Contactless Open Payments Working Committee
The goal of the Transit Contactless Open Payments Working Committee is for all interested stakeholders to work collaboratively to identify possible solutions that address the challenges associated with the implementation of contactless open loop acceptance terminals at gated customer points of entry within the unique retail environment of the U.S. and Canadian public transit market.
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