Melbourne transport card readers wont accept credit cards or mobiles until 2025
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
How could a lead contractor impose constraints which delay enabling these devices a year or more? It feels like its an entirely confected problem because at scale the card handling side isn't the problem: its the transactional reconciliation which they have to do anyway, all the time. Every tram, train and bus already has sensors which are compatible, in this logic.
If I can read the card they read, then surely they can read the datastream I emit from my phone? The Antenna is the same!
(this has also happened in my home town of Brisbane except they did a trial run on two trainlines and for university students, so we all know that CC, phones and the "GoCard" reader are completely compatible. Deployment is delayed here too)
I suspect the underlying problem is the financials. Brisbane Transport holds $millions of stored-value card dollars and gets to use them, invest them, with passengers as the creditor. They make a LOT of money off this because at scale its investment of that money at market rates, against draw-down for use on the bus or train. Moving to CC they will lose the retention of this cash-cow. Earning 5-7% rates out of this pile, vs $zero because you hold nothing in advance is a big hit to the bottom line.
If not, the cost would need to be accommodated where the interest's been lost. I don't see a net cost reduction.
Perhaps there's a welfare effect, I don't know; living where cards, phones (QR code or NFC) or bank card (NFC) are all accepted and have been for several years, most passengers still opt for transport card but a non small amount prefer phone but that's my completely localised anecdote.
Would costs be increased through transaction or implementation fees for capital not yet depreciated? Implementation doesn't need to mean new hardware either, it includes tooling, software, but goes beyond to different workflows needing testing from fumbling for phones vs fumbling for cards to customer support - were the results from the trial run you mentioned published? Is there any compelling urgency?
But the reason behind this, is customer drive: UX suggests people want to use phones, and visitors feel disadvantaged having to step out of transport queues to find a (diminishing count, hard to find) place to buy a card with stored value which winds up being tossed away or lost with cash left on it, rather than paying their bill by CC or phone.
Octopus users may still acquire cards: I bet they get cards associated with their login to some reconciliation scheme, or rebalance scheme. London casual use by tourists would tend to visacard swipe by now I would think, but I don't have the numbers. Possibly a better pricepoint for commuters willing to sink funds into a prepaid card.