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Libercard, ViVOtech and Inteligensa have collaborated to develop the first Transit & Retail combination contactless payment implementation in Latin America.
With the new technology, Brazilians in the city of Fortaleza can now use a single contactless payment card to travel on local transit and make retail purchases. Libercard has enabled tens of thousands of transit riders with dual-purpose prepaid contactless cards to travel, pay for purchases and perform top-ups at several hundred retail stores in Fortaleza that use ViVOtech contactless payment devices implemented with Inteligensa integration expertise.
According to Junia Moreira, Partner and Director of Libercard: "With over 2 million contactless prepaid cards being used in for public transport in Fortaleza today it just makes sense to extend this payment solution beyond transportation and into our retail stores. A large number of our passengers are part of the unbanked population of Brazil and the ability to use prepaid accounts gives them a safe and easy way to pay for their day-to-day purchases. In only three months Libercard had over 2.5 million dollars in purchases with the first 20,000 pilot cards, and plans to issue another 120,000 cards by the end of the year, eventually fully replacing the 1.5 million transit only cards with Libercard dual use cards."
This success in Fortaleza demonstrates the enormous potential that contactless payment solutions have in reaching out to unbanked populations in developing countries with new financial services and readies the ecosystem for future expansion of payments using NFC-enabled mobile phones, according to Mohammad Khan, president and founder of ViVOtech.
The Fortaleza pilot is the first implementation in Latin America of a combined contactless payment card for transit and retail use. ViVOtech's ViVOpay 5000 readers accept prepaid payments for purchases and re-loading both transit and payment accounts is available at all retailer locations.
ViVOpay's technology supports future expansion of the project to include branded contactless EMV payment cards and NFC mobile phone payments in addition to MiFare technology. "After expanding in Fortaleza, we want to deploy this solution in other cities and states throughout Brazil and Latin America," said Moreira.
Sources: Libercard; Vivotech; Inteligensa Group
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