New York Rail Transit Gets Apple Pay, Masterpass Support

Passengers on New York’s Metro-North Railroad and Long Island Railroad can  now pay for tickets with Apple Pay and Masterpass.

The support is enabled via the MTA eTix app, which is used to offer web purchases for the rail travel systems. It appears to be part of a larger raft of transportation infrastructure initiatives announced by the state governor’s office, with other modernization efforts including the installation of automatic tolling systems for the state’s bridges and tunnels.

MTA eTix is itself quite a recent development, with the app having just launched this past summer. By embracing Apple Pay, transit administrators are leaping forward again, with such mPayment systems only just beginning to gain strong traction among consumers. The same goes for Masterpass, the digital wallet platform that Mastercard is using to take aim not only at Apple Pay and other mPayment systems, but digital payment rivals more generally, among whom PayPal is probably the most prominent.

In a statement, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proclaimed, “By adding the use of cutting edge technology like Apple Pay and Masterpass, we are not only making mass transit easier to use, but are also improving the overall experience of riders.”