The EMT (Municipal Transport Company) of Madrid announced today that You can now pay with the contactless system in the entire bus fleet in the capital. This means that if we have a credit card associated with the Apple Pay app on our iPhone, We can now pay for the trip on Madrid buses with our mobile phone and Apple Watch.
That in 2019 a service can be paid with contactless should not be news. It is not a technological advance, since payment per contact has been used for years in millions of establishments. The "grace" is that it has finally reached urban transport. We hope that it will soon spread to the rest of the cities of the Spanish territory.
This is what the EMT company announced today: It has already completed the installation of the payment terminals in the entire fleet of more than two thousand buses of the Madrid metropolitan bus lines, managed by this company. After a few months of testing on the express line at Barajas Adolfo Suarez airport, As of today, all lines are operational with this system.
Today the first of the three phases starts
That you can already pay for a trip with your iPhone on the Bus is already a lot, but it is not everything. We already have the hardware installed and working. From there, it is only a matter of software to advance the payment system until it is completed in three phases, as has already been done in other cities. Let's see:
The first phase (the most expensive) has already been completed. Equip the buses with the contactless payment terminal, and put the system into operation. You can already pay for a trip with a credit card, either with a physical card, or through a compatible device, such as an iPhone with Apple Pay.
But here is not the thing. The second phase will be to add the multi-trip subscription card, with its different modalities, to the Apple Pay system, like any other payment card. It would be a significant advance. We would stop carrying around the "delicate" cardboard fertilizers.
The thirdIt would only be for convenience and fluency in the entry and payment of the bus. It would be the integration into the Apple Pay Express Transit system. It will be enough to bring the device closer to the payment terminal without having to authenticate, and thus not having to stop in front of the terminal for a few seconds to validate the payment through Face ID or Touch ID.
Hopefully this initiative will spread to the rest of the cities. It would be a great advance to be able to "put" the cardboard bus ticket inside our iPhone, and pay only by bringing the Apple Watch closer. It is not science fiction, but a reality. It is only a matter of "paste" to install the terminals, that the truth, seeing as they are, should not be cheap….