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According to BART, First Data and ViVOtech, the NFC trial conducted in the San Francisco area from January to May 2008, demonstrates high use when both transit fare and retail payments are combined in the same phone.
Earlier this year a select group of San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) riders took part in a first-in-the-nation trial to pay for their fares and food, receive discounts and check account balances using just their new mobile phone containing a contactless chip that enables transactions without a traditional plastic card.
The results show that BART riders who took part in the trial extensively used their contactless, NFC enabled phones to pay for their BART fares and meals at participating Jack in the Box restaurants. The results also show that participants at BART stations frequently tapped smart advertisements in BART stations with their NFC phones. These posters contained directions to nearby Jack in the Box restaurants.
According to the data, trial participants took close to 9,000 trips on BART during the trial. To pay at BART stations, they simply tapped their NFC-equipped mobile phones, provided by Sprint, on top of the BART fare gates. This represents an average of 50 trips per participant during the four-month trial. Participants also topped up their BART card balances more than 800 times using the over-the-air (OTA) feature of their phones averaging five BART top-ups per mobile phone during the trial. More than 80% of trial participants indicated that the mobile wallet application was easy to use.
BART's longest serving board member, James Fang, predicts that, if all goes well, millions of Americans will have access to these NFC-enabled phones starting in two years. He adds: "With so many people turning to transit to avoid the ever-skyrocketing price of gas, we must do everything we can to break down the barriers that stand in the way of them using BART. The NFC-enabled phone simplifies their lives because they never need to dig for a BART ticket again, and they can bypass those fumbling for change at the ticket machine, and instead, go directly through the fare gates - knowing they always have the correct fare on their phones."
"The BART trial results show that transit payment is a killer application for NFC mobile phones providing convenience and speed to customers who take transit and other public transportation frequently," says Michael Mullagh, ViVOtech CEO.
ViVOtech developed the wallet software for the NFC mobile phones and the OTA card provisioning servers that Sprint used for the trial. This enabled participants to remotely download their BART fare and Jack Ca$h gift cards onto their mobile phones, check their card balances, review previous transactions, automatically top up their cards and use their phones to pay for BART fares and Jack in the Box food. ViVOtech also provided the contactless payment devices that read the NFC-enabled chips at Jack in the Box restaurants.
Sources: First Data; BART; ViVOtech
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